It's all hype, as the article points out. "Battleship", it's not. No mention of armor. A battleship is supposed to be able to withstand a hit from its own primary weapon.
The British Navy had a fad for light cruisers at one point, "eggshells armed with sledgehammers". They did not do well in WWI and WWII.[1] Nor did the armored battleships. No Japanese or German battleship in WWII survived a determined air attack. Yamato, Tirpiz, Bismark - all lost to air attack.
But they looked really cool.
Anywhere near the coast of China, a warship is within range of truck-mounted anti-ship missiles.[2] Lots of them. If there's a war over Taiwan, the Taiwan Strait will be a no-go zone for US warships. Being near a hostile coast held by someone with modern weapons is death to a navy today. The sinking of the Moskva was the first demonstration of this, and Ukraine has since taken out about eight more Russian warships and many smaller craft, using various missiles and drones.
It’s geriatric hype. It tells you how the administration is thinking about the Navy: in terms someone born in the 1940s—and who never refreshed their assumptions since childhood—can understand.
What we should have are floating, automated drone-production platforms that can be mass manufactured themselves and shipped to right ahead of the front for overwhelming the enemy’s sea-based defences (while F-35s take care of SEAD). Instead we get Popeye with a rail gun.
It's a storage thing. You can make it so that the parts fit together better in pieces, then you assemble the pieces in theatre during deployment, so you have more drones in combat per mothership.
It's not like taking crude, cracking it, then refining the plastics, yadda yadda yadda. It's more an fast automated assembly thing.
Inside of a submersible warship really is not the place to be conducting assembly of sensitive electronics, and just because you call it "fast automated" doesn't mean it's either of those enough to be feasible in combat situations.
Right. What's more likely is a box launcher in a shipping container. Both China and the US have prototyped that. Launch from anything that can carry a shipping container. Such as a small, expendable self-propelled barge.
Lots of weapon systems already require some assembly before use (for compact storage and other reasons), but we don't call that "production" of weapons.
The Arsenal ship concept[1] paired with the idea of "crew optional" ships would be inline with this idea and also integrate with the data link capabilities intended for the F35 (where it potentially fires missiles it's not carrying at targets it identifies).
The thing which stands out about VLS systems is the salvo fire capability of them: VLS tubes can launch an entire ships ammo complement in as little as 60 seconds or so. Which is a massive advantage because it means if a ship is targeted it can still potentially service every single target in range before it's in any danger of actually being hit.
Yeah, and the reason the arsenal ship proposal been shot down time after time, by many nations, is because when you actually dig into it, it's a bad idea.
There's a minimum tonnage needed to mount a big enough radar, have a hanger for a helicopter, and plenty of room for VLS, RAM, etc.
But past that, it's better to distribute your assets across multiple vessels vs building one dramatically larger ship.
It's far better to have 4x Arleigh Burke style ships than one behemoth that's 4x the tonnage.
Heck, this was true even at the end of the battleship era. Just look at how useless the Yamato proved to be. And it's doubly true now in an era of very sophisticated anti ship missiles.
Also, conceiving of this in terms of single platforms is also just totally wrong. We assemble surface action groups with a mix of capabilities that match the situation. Some of our Burkes focus on anti aircraft warfare, other's anti submarine, so we send a mix. And when they're on station each hull can be in the location best suited to its task.
So really you have to think about the whole package, and the arsenal ship just doesn't offer anything desirable on that basis.
That surely depends on the particulars of the anti-missile defense technology. If it turns out that bigger ships are actually more survivable because you can put more effective anti-missile defense systems on them, then maybe it makes more sense to put everything on one big ship rather than distributed across many small ships.
> The thing which stands out about VLS systems is the salvo fire capability of them: VLS tubes can launch an entire ships ammo complement in as little as 60 seconds or so.
And then it has to go back to base to reload. Reloading at sea is marginally possible. The U.S. Navy has demonstrated it recently, in harbor. But it's not done routinely with live ammo yet. This is a known weak point.
It's not clear when you would ever reload a conventional ships gun at sea either though, particularly on a modern transparent battle space.
It would still involve putting two or more ships in close proximity with heavy lift equipment for an extended time.
If this is close to the front it's a target, if it's not then you could reload VLS cells, and to do it your sacrificing the ability to put munitions on targets quickly which might just cost you the entire ship.
It's not even clear it saves you any reload time, since the only potential benefit is that shells are somewhat smaller then missiles, and even then once you account for magazine design and survivability I'd say the trade off is questionable at best.
You can helicopter shells and propellant onto the deck, then take them below for storage — as loading the guns from their magazines already happens.
VLS requires that you reload missile by missile at the place they’re fired from the top, which requires you have crane access to each VLS cell. You could replace the many non-reloadable tubes with fewer, reloadable tubes connected via loaders to magazines… but we’re starting down the path to re-inventing guns.
Helicopters don't have that much range - certainly way less then a ship does. So either you're close enough to a land base they can make the trip, or you're operating from another munitions ship - it's all the same problem.
And again, you're paying for all of this in the form of far slower firing guns with less range and precision.
Helicopters can operate off supply ships, 100km back from the conflict area and ferry munitions to your battleship that’s standing only 20km back. You can also use airdrops from cargo planes, delivery by small boats, or dropping back to meet the supply ship directly. None of those methods resupply VLS cells.
We’re also not debating a return to old guns — but to a modern version using autoloaders and shells equipped with guidance and range extension, to around 100km using modern techniques. Using barrages of all barrels, it’s closer to firing off waves of ~45 missiles at targets 100km away (9 guns, 5 rounds per minute burst).
The real difference is a battleship carries 1200 rounds instead of 120 VLS cells — and can replenish those rounds at sea. We gain that increased storage and endurance for decreased burst capacity, but remain over 45/min; excluding the VLS cells (which a modern battleship would also have).
The problem is 100km back just isn't very far, when missiles like the Ukranian Neptune have a range currently of 200km, and extended range variants in the works that push that to 1,000km.
That's a non-NATO, "country at war" system. Within NATO inventory you have the Tomahawk that dates to the 80s and has a range of 1,350km conservatively.
So if you needed to fulfill a long-duration shore bombardment mission against a non-peer opponent...sure, there's advantages to being able to loiter and reload.
But it seems abundantly clear that versus any peer or near-peer opponent, the closer to their coastline you get then the further in-land they can launch anti-ship missiles from - which they are heavily incentivized to do, and where the sky is also just getting more and more dangerous - i.e. a ship within 100km of a shoreline is starting to be in the range of medium weight drones, or autonomous surface vessels (which might deploy drones - as the Ukranians have been doing).
In your example, the issue isn't that the ship doing the shooting is in range: it's that the resupply ship is also in range and a better target.
You’re holding a double standard, eg, a carrier can’t engage from outside the 1000km+ of modern anti ship missiles either.
But that 200km is exactly my point: 120km back from the line of contact means that to hit it with 200km missiles, you’re within 80km of the contact line and the guns of my battleship for counter fire.
If I can force you to fire off your 1000km+ missiles at every transport ship that could potentially carry artillery shells or even dozens at my battleship to defeat its air defenses and sink it, then I’m accomplishing my goal of depleting your better weapons ahead of my main thrust. And surviving even minutes in a good firing position means raining down hundreds of 500kg+ glide bombs from the main guns.
A battleship is better than a carrier for “I’m going to sit here at 100km from the enemy and trade fire until they’re forced to go hard and overwhelm me”.
But the competition isn't carrier-based aviation, it's VLS cells on other platforms.
If you have more of them, then your ships can engage from further ranges meaning they can shoot sooner and faster while dealing with less incoming threats in response.
Because to defeat those incoming missiles you're going to need your own - which is what the Navy does now.
It's a comparative benefit problem: what's the floating gun platform doing thats worth the purchase price compared to just having more VLS cells which can do air defense, land attack, anti-missile defense and ballistic missile defense? Buying the gun platform is coming at the expense of that. If you can find more money to also have a gun platform, why not just buy more missiles?
The practical adversary the US Navy is facing is China which has large numbers of hypersonic ground launched anti-ship weapons. The fight never gets to shore bombardment, because either you deal with those threats or your ships get killed.
The problem is you're presuming that the adversary has a relatively few long range missiles - but the problem is, you have relatively much fewer ships then anyone has missiles. Killing the munitions ship is one option, killing the battleship - particularly at $15 billion a piece - also just takes the threat off the board. And you can do it before it possibly even gets in range.
Yes — I never argued against VLS cells, but against exclusively VLS cells. I agree with you they’re necessary, including in modern battleships for air defense.
What I’m arguing is that the threat generated by that bombardment capability — against islands in the ASEAN sea, against ports in China, etc — is necessary to force the kind of engagement you want. China has around 1300 medium range ballistic missiles, which is what we’re discussing.
Forcing China to overwhelm your single battleship (and support group, comparing BSG to CSG), depletes around 10-25% of their MRBMs, depending on their ability to penetrate your defenses. If they don’t make that choice, you obliterate the target and move on to the next one because you have 1200 glide bombs and the ability to resupply underway (similar to landing bombs on a carrier).
I don’t think we’re going to agree, but I appreciate you taking the time to give thoughtful criticism!
I read that as: it's a benefit to empty the payload if you're certain the ship is going to be sunk. Doing that in 60sec. prevents wasted payload or the opportunity for the enemy to recover the munitions.
Is that correct, or is it mostly to "get in quickly, get out quickly" then reload in safety?
The notion of a "crew optional" ship is a bit silly. It might have some utility for coastal defense: when it breaks down close to shore you can send a tugboat to tow it back. But I can't see how uncrewed surface vessels would be of much use to an expeditionary blue-water navy. Anything constantly exposed to salt water and vibration will break down. We're decades away from having robots that can do maintenance and repair.
Interesting. However, that machine is massive and specialized. I think we are a long way from generic robots being able to achieve something similar, let alone maintain a warship at sea.
Routine maintenance like cleaning, inspection, and consumables replacement is very easily automated. Breakdowns can easily be prevented with a combination of redundancy and preventative maintenance. Without a crew you can eliminate many systems that are necessary for sustaining a crew's long term presence which leaves a lot fewer failure points and a lot of room for redundant systems. With modular design you don't need an advanced robot that can fix an arbitrary problem, you just rip out whatever module contains the problem and replace it. It's unlikely on any given deployment that you'd run into a particular problem that can't be handled by an automated system and must be addressed prior to the next return to base, but if you did then telepresence robots, or a team flown over from a nearby ship in the battlegroup would likely be sufficient. If your ship is having a problem that is likely to cause the loss of the ship and a team of experts alone is not enough to fix it, do you really want to have more bodies on that ship?
People are not available though. Navies and militaries in all western nations have huge recruiting problems and that's before dropping fertility rates will shrink the entire pool of able bodied potential recruits.
"DoD IG: Army, Navy Miscounted Recruits With Low Academic Scores
The Army and Navy exceeded the legal level of recruits with the lowest acceptable Armed Forces Qualification Test scores, according to a report from the Pentagon’s Inspector General released this week.
The services, which are in the midst of reversing years of stagnant new enlistments, each created preparatory courses that would allow potential recruits with low AFQT scores to spend weeks studying under military teachers, in order to raise their scores and then move to boot camp.
While both the Army and Navy have seen success with the preparatory programs, helping the services to meet recruiting goals, following the Pentagon’s guidance on how to count these recruits may have violated federal law, the new report alleges.
Under U.S. law, a service can only have 4 percent of its recruits that score in the lowest percentiles on the AFQT, unless it gets the permission of the secretary of defense, which would bring additional Congressional oversight. As of March 31, 2025, the Navy exceeded that percentage, without permission of the secretary of defense, with 11.3 percent of recruits falling into what the military calls category IV scores, according to the Dec. 11 OIG report...."
That's a common misconception. The days of taking anyone who walked into the recruiting office are long over. US Navy recruits are, on average, regular middle class youths with a high school diploma or some college. Most of them could do fine in the civilian labor market if they wanted to.
The truly desperate people don't even meet recruiting standards due to criminal records, health conditions, drug use, low fitness, bad test scores, lack of a high school diploma, etc.
Almost. It's hype for geriatrics, or one geriatric to be precise. Think of it as the USS Trump Reacharound. It'll never get around to being built, but I'm sure the Navy will get lots of concessions from the Dear Leader for proposing it.
I read an article shortly after Trump's first win which said that American women, especially the oldest remaining generation or so of voters did not believe a woman could be President, and so they were anti-Clinton in a way their comparable daughters were not.
At the time I found this an interesting comparison to the UK. In the UK my mother's generation (squarely in that same bracket) voted in Margaret Thatcher†, the "Iron Lady" and so they know a woman is no different from a man in terms of potential to lead. Which doesn't mean (see Liz Truss) better but also doesn't mean worse.
So in the UK you could definitely put a strong female leader at the top of the ticket and expect to get the same response, and in the US that seems likely in the future but it certainly counted against Clinton and even in 2028 it's probably a bad bet (assuming that is, that the US holds a meaningful presidential election in 2028)
† Thatcher isn't much liked, especially in some parts of the UK, but nobody is fooling themselves by thinking she was incompetent or ineffectual, they mostly thought she was bad which is different.
It's been said for a long time that the first woman President of the United States would be conservative. The stated rationale was that voters would somehow see the conservativeness as cancelling out the "natural liberalness" of a woman.
Margaret Thatcher does not dispel that somewhat hackneyed notion. Nor do the last two women Democrats in the U.S. that ran.
I would like you to please consider that we conservatives would vote for a conservative woman because she aligns with our values, not because something is "cancelling out" her woman-ness.
Both of these two contests were really weird. Trump is an extremely unusual Republican. Hillary was someone Republican mouthpieces had been priming the electorate to vote against for the prior 20+ years. Kamala moved to the top of the ticket late in the race, in an odd move, replacing a candidate whose approval ratings had been in (historically speaking) “you will definitely lose” territory for months already.
Both races were pretty close despite this.
Also, I can tell you first hand that heartland, salt of the earth, common clay of the new west Republicans, the worst of the worst from democrats’ perspectives, loved Palin. Looooved her. She’d have done better among them than McCain. That’s among hardcore republicans. How the shit am I supposed to believe Hillary and Kamala being women is the reason they lost, given that?
I think the “lesson” of “well a woman just can’t win yet” is simply ignorant. It doesn’t fit what we’ve actually seen.
You're correct. That woman (Clinton) had no chance in winning, because Republicans had spent years hammering her in anticipation of her inevitable run, and many Democrats felt she was chosen before the primary, leading to much apathy. Had Harris had more time, she could've taken it.
Or, as you said, had the Republicans put up Palin, I think the world would look veery different today. I don't think there would've been as much of an appetite for the populist trump nonsense today.
> and many Democrats felt she was chosen before the primary, leading to much apathy
Well, they would have a good reason to feel that, because Debbie Wasserman Schulz basically engineered it that way as head of the DNC, and what do you know, less than 24 hours after leaving that position was the head of Clinton's campaign.
There was no way the DNC leadership was going with Bernie, and leaked emails later confirmed that - they just said fuck you to their membership's preferences.
> Had Harris had more time
Not coincidentally, number one Google search on Election Day?
And Hillary Clinton did get more of the popular vote—not that it actually matters in America's cockamamie system: not enough votes were in the "correct" places.
My gut feel has always been that removing the electoral college would hurt the blue team and help the red team. Logic:
The popular vote is basically split evenly today (the usual talking point, 2016, was 62,984,828 Trump, 65,853,514 Clinton). 2020 and 2024 had similarly small-ish margins.
So take 2016: if we’d had a normal election cycle, and then the day after voting said “hey guys let’s do this based on the popular vote!”, Clinton would have won. But that’s not how it would be; both sides would know of this change for at least the full election cycle.
So now you start with a roughly 50/50 split voting base, with many Democrat votes coming from big cities and many Republican votes from Middle Of Nowhere, Kansas.
You win the upcoming election by gaining votes.
Republicans go energize the voters in New York, LA, SF, Seattle, Austin, etc, who are not voting today because they (correctly) know their vote doesn’t matter. They maybe change some bit of their platform to appeal more the big city voters. They can pick up millions of votes in relatively few places.
Democrats have to go win votes from Middle Of Nowhere, Kansas. Or more accurately, 500 small towns in Kansas, to pick up a few hundred thousand votes. There isn’t nearly as much of a depressed Dem vote in red states, simply because red states have small populations (see “land doesn’t vote!”). It’s an exponentially harder problem. While Democrats are trying to convince Uncle Rupert that FOX is lying to him, Republicans are filling Madison Square Garden in NYC with closeted Republicans and telling them their vote will count for the first time ever.
I just don’t see how abolishing the electoral college doesn’t backfire on Democrats. How wrong am I?
Today, people probably stay home in safe states - if you vote Democrat or Republican in California - you already know how the state is going to be called. Same can be said for Alabama. Why waste your time for a sure thing?
Some 65% of the population voted last time. Last cycle, there were some jokes about how only votes in the handful of battleground states mattered. A popular vote policy could activate a lot of non-voters who suddenly felt like their voice could have an impact on the result. How that would shake up, I am not sure. I have heard that most republican voters are already participating, there are significantly more democrats who stay home.
The Electoral College strengthens democracy by enabling local-election-observation to be a highly effective safeguard against fraud and voter demoralization.
At my neighborhood polling place, poll watchers (including local professors, blue collar neighbors, and even occasional UN election observers) volunteer to quietly monitor the election process, verifying that no registered voter is rejected or harassed. With a day off work, any citizen can audit their precinct to verify that end-of-day machine totals match the state's certified results, and could alert the news of any discrepancy. Any motivated citizen can trace their vote's impact up to the state level.
This matters because the Electoral College locks in your vote at the state level by using it to secure electoral college votes. Should fraud occur in some far away state, the Electoral College prevents it from numerically overturning the electoral college votes your state has secured. This federated system is more resilient against local failures.
By contrast, adopting a nationwide popular vote means that votes don't count until they're tallied at the national level. At the national level, a firmware flaw in a poll machine in Hawaii, or a lazy Secretary of State in Arkansas can cause the system to accept fraudulent votes that numerically overwhelm the national tally without ever presenting itself in a way I could observe or report. Without the Electoral College, Democracy loses a lot of its "go see for yourself" and becomes too much "just trust us."
> The Electoral College strengthens democracy by enabling local-election-observation to be a highly effective safeguard against fraud and voter demoralization.
The Electoral College is a bigger source of voter demoralization than anything that exists in any modern representative democracy which doesn't have the Electoral College. (FPTP by itself is bad, but even other systems have FPTP, don't have nearly the degree and persistence of voter demoralization seen in the US.)
Like, I can see how one might utter this sentence in an alternate universe where the US was the only approximation of representative democracy that ever existed and where every commentary was purely theoretical with no concrete comparisons to make, but in the actual world we live in, where there are plenty of concrete alternatives and whole bodies of comparative study, it is beyond ridiculous.
You are correct, because the current implementation of the electoral college is currently synonymous with "winner takes all" in all but two states - ensuring no opposing party turnout in states that are a foregone conclusion. If the winner-takes-all system were removed but the electoral college were still intact, Democrats would never win another election.
I don't think that can be right. The Democrats have recently won both the House and the Senate. In such an election, if "winner take all" is abolished, how would they not win the presidency?
Because in states like California, Colorado, etc., vast swathes of Republicans do not bother to vote because their vote is overridden. The numbers don't work in reverse.
Just look at the county maps within blue states: these elections you speak of relied on those folks being entirely disenfranchised.
Of course it works in reverse. Plenty of Democrats are not going to bother to waste their time in California when the current electoral outcome is a foregone conclusion. Similar with Republicans in Mississippi.
If the rules changed to a popular vote where even "safe" states were up for grabs, I think there would be lots of previously uncounted "dark matter" voters who would activate and would significantly impact the outcome.
This math doesn't work in reverse because there aren't as many applicable people or relevant districts in the rest of the states.
Mississippi has far fewer total disenfranchised Democrats (in both absolute number, district count, etc.) than California has disenfranchised Republicans.
Without extreme gerrymandering, there simply aren't enough eligible-to-be-swung electoral votes to meaningfully benefit Democrats in rural states.
You do not need disenfranchisement, just apathetic voters who do not currently contribute. Right now there are ~23 million voters registered in California. 45% registered D, 25 %R, giving absolute numbers of 10 million D, and ~6 million R. Which you can handwave is 4 million Ds who know they do not need to contribute - their neighbor has their back to secure the state electoral votes.
Looking at the US as a whole, there are 44 million registered D with 37 million R. If you could round up all affiliated voters, Dems win the presidency every election if going by popular vote[0].
Yeah, I think that after 2024 neither political party is likely to run a woman for president for the next generation at a minimum, and I think the voters agree.
(I don’t think that’s GOOD, mind you, but twice bitten)
Nikki Haley did very well in the primary against a more well known Ron DeSantis & Chris Christie. We have had multiple governors.
The only 2 that have run are not a good example.
A lot of people had strong opinions on Hillary that had nothing to do with her politics or leadership. A lot didn't want another 4-8 years of Clinton/Bush after 28 years depending on how you count Bush Sr. You could even add another 4 to that for Hillary's 4 yrs of influence as Secretary of State.
Harris wasn't popular in the primaries, many thought she wasn't deserving of the VP & she was part of an unpopular White House that was given a few ticking time bombs that they didn't properly diffuse. They also failed miserably to communicate with the public.
I don’t think Democrats will. I did think there’s a non-trivial chance of an Ivanka ticket depending on how the family brand is doing by then. He’s used to thinking in terms of nepotism and his sons have the charisma of floor wax.
I know you being somewhat sarcastic, but the problem is the democrats put forward a checkbox-ticking uninspired candidate that had no business running for president - which I say based on her atrocious record in California and as VP. Her gender doesn’t factor into this.
Or in the case of Clinton, the party used undemocratic means to counter a political groundswell for a candidate they didn’t like, triggering an apathetic exit and no turnout for the most important voting bloc.
Most critically, the party seems utterly incapable of learning from these mistakes, and only doubles down on the worst decisions in the next election.
As it stands, we’d probably get a trans candidate (if there is one available) in the next presidential election. Which I’d want to celebrate.. but under present circumstances it would lead to an absolute electoral defeat. The Democratic Party leadership needs to learn to read the f$@!ing room, and put forward candidates with broad appeal.
Bernie is the closer analog to Trump in the Democratic Party, at least for this comparison. Trump is not a checkbox filling candidate by any measure. He was the protest vote against the system.
Even the second time, for different reasons. There was a lot of anger at how the Democratic Party kept the details of Biden’s decline hidden, and then did an emergency switcharoo at the last minute without a second primary. A lot of dem voters felt disenfranchised, and didn’t bother voting, or filed a protest vote thinking Trump would be as ineffectual the second time around as he was the first.
You might consider the field even for other reasons (which would make your comment something of a non-sequitur), but those adjectives certainly do not apply to Trump, regardless of what you think of the man and his politics. Trump very famously did not tick GOP checkboxes, and he has inspired a cultish following in a way that Clinton/Biden/Harris clearly cannot.
I blame the Primaries. The dogs choose the doggiest candidate and the cats choose the cattiest. The llamas and raccoons of Canidsas and Califelinia don’t even bother voting because the dog and cat candidates in these dog and cat voting states have always been and will continue to be in office term after term. The presidential race boils down to a handful of swing voters in purple Pettsylvania and Furrida.
US WWII battleships survived many determined air attacks in the Pacific Theater. They were heavily modified to carry more anti-aircraft cannons with huge supplies of ammunition. Improvements in radar, proximity fuses, fire control, and tactical doctrine proved to be extremely effective. Japanese kamikaze aircraft were conceptually similar to modern cruise missiles, just slower.
> Anywhere near the coast of China, a warship is within range of truck-mounted anti-ship missiles.[2] Lots of them. If there's a war over Taiwan, the Taiwan Strait will be a no-go zone for US warships.
Not to mention China's attack submarines, with their own anti-ship missiles as well as old-fashioned torpedoes. They have proven their ability to pop up and say "hello!" to US warships in the past. [0] Getting that close wouldn't be as easy when everyone is on a wartime footing, but then again, US ships would be steaming right towards them...
The Taiwan strait is too shallow for submarines to operate, so in a hypothetical conflict, China's subs will be much further out, trying to keep US strike groups far from the island, while also securing China's supply lines through Malacca.
Note this is one of the material motivations for the CCP gaining control over Taiwan. They'd quite like to move their submarine basing to the east side of the island as a practical matter. It's got deep water and plenty of cliffs/mountains suitable for hardened docks/shelters.
> China's subs will be much further out, trying to keep US strike groups far from the island
I agree that's generally true and I didn't mean to imply otherwise. Thinking it through, though: if Japan is party to the conflict its naval assets are likely to be much closer to China, and China will need to keep some assets nearby in the East China Sea to honor the threat regardless.
To be honest the thing that's puzzled me about the Izumo-class ships since I read about them and the conversion they are undergoing to carry F-35Bs is where exactly they'd be safe to operate in a conflict against China. It's not like those planes have great range, and it's not like refueling is usually going to be an option, so if they're going to be put to use those ships are going to be in range of an awful lot of stuff. And what a juicy target for China.
> The Taiwan strait is too shallow for submarines to operate
Is that true of China's smallest diesel-electric attack subs? I'd think the reason for them not to operate there would be a lack of targets.
edit: I take the latter part back. Apparently mine-laying in the straight by US submarines is hypothetically something that could happen in the conflict, and that would certainly constitute a target for China
> The sinking of the British Prince of Wales and Repulse by the Japanese is probably a better example of how battleships became vulnerable to airpower.
In retrospect the Japanese got a bit lucky there; subsequent air attacks on battleships show they can be remarkably tough. Musashi took 19 torpedo and 17 bomb hits to sink.
But these days you’re defending against the likes of squadrons of low flying B52s firing 20 (possibly nuclear) cruise missiles each. The bombers can fly back and re-arm much more quickly than any fleet, and there are a lot more bombers than ships. Add in submarines, destroyers and other platforms with even more missiles and I doubt any large ship or fleet will last long in any serious conflict.
Worth noting that the attack on the Bismarck was by biplane Gloucester gladiators which were outdated even at the start of the war.
Compare them to the planes that carried out attacks in the Pacific theatre. The Grumman Avenger was maybe 2 generations newer (and actually remained in service until the 1960s(
"Despite being obsolescent, the Swordfish achieved some spectacular successes during the war, including sinking one battleship and damaging two others belonging to the Regia Marina (the Italian navy) during the Battle of Taranto, and the famous attack on the German battleship Bismarck, which contributed to her eventually being sunk. Swordfishes sank a greater tonnage of Axis shipping than any other Allied aircraft during the war. The Swordfish remained in front-line service until V-E Day, having outlasted some of the aircraft intended to replace it."
They also took part in the Norwegian campaign, the (still controversial) attack on Mers-el-Kébir, the defense of Malta and the Battle of Cape Matapan.
The fact that was slow had some advantages for launching torpedoes. I've also heard it said that the Bismarck struggled to shoot them down because its fire control systems were not calibrated for planes that slow (don't know if that is true).
"Indeed, its takeoff and landing speeds were so low that, unlike most carrier-based aircraft, it did not require the carrier to be steaming into the wind. On occasion, when the wind was right, Swordfish were flown from a carrier at anchor."
Despite looking like something from WW1, they only entered service in 1936.
There is one on display at the Imperial War museum in Duxford, UK.
My father had a friend who flew Swordfishes in WW2. He was quite a character.
The Bismark was also attacked by biplanes with defective torpedos (thankfully, that saved HMS Sheffield). Basically only two torpedos even hit the german battleship.
Presumably because the british torpedos were so awful, Tirpitz was attacked with regular bombs, which meant they were using the worst method of sinking a ship, from the top down, and so it didn't do much until they whipped out the ultra heavy ones. And it's not like the attacks were going poorly, Tirpitz was taking the hits because it could not kill the planes.
So what would a guided missile battleship look like?
my guess would be trident sized(2m) silos as the main battery and you fill them with vls cells as a working battery. for armor It needs to be able to defend agenst it's own gun right, so that would probably be a bunch of missile defense systems.
It is often said that aircraft carriers replaced battleships but I don't think that is the case, I think aircraft carriers are kind of their own thing and the battleship role was actually replaced by ballistic missile submarines. Think about it, where are the big guns in the navy located? And the more tenuous but fun argument, look how the ships are named, battleships got state names, SSBN's got state names coincidence, I think not.
Battleships are meant to fight other battleships. And you don't nuke ships. They are a relic from WWI when ships still had to engage each other directly.
They also filled a shore bombardment role. But you also don't use nukes for that (rather modern aircraft).
And the Iowa battle ships were later equipped to handle "special weapons"
But in seriousness, the restraint shown in the use of nuclear weapons is amazing, one day the genie will be let out of the lamp but it hasn't yes.
On the topic of genies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIR-2_Genie (sigh) yes an air to air missile with a nuclear warhead was not only invented it was built and deployed... With how hard we were actively flirting with the demon that is nuclear war it is incredible that anyone is still alive.
> Anywhere near the coast of China, a warship is within range of truck-mounted anti-ship missiles.[2] Lots of them.
Yes, which is why the DDG(X) class has loads of stealth built in, to make it harder for those missiles to lock on.
One of the most important tools for fighting missiles is... an aircraft carrier. Early warning air systems (E2 Hawkeye), interceptors (F35), mostly for blowing up scouting craft.
Missiles can only home into what they can detect and see. Blowbup their eyes (RADAR systems) and they are flying blind. It's a lot of ocean out there and the horizon is surprisingly short.
Flight is your best way to cover a lot of ocean and find an enemy, but anything flying should be taken out by an F35.
--------
I'm not so against a rail gun or any of these future weapons per se. IIRC Japan has deployed a rail gun and they are an ally, with the right R&D team / licensing we might be able to get a working design.
But you know, that depends on how well Japans Railgun works. Ditto with laser systems and whatnot: as long as we test the crap out of them it's fine to deploy.
> The sinking of the Moskva was the first demonstration of this, and Ukraine has since taken out about eight more Russian warships and many smaller craft, using various missiles and drones.
Moskva is barely comparable to a singular US Destroyer, let alone a cruiser or larger boat.
And USA deploys large teams of Destroyers to help watch each other (and protect the carrier at the core of their fleet).
I'd expect that a drone being launched at a US Carrier strike group would simply be gunned down by the machine guns of an F35, long before they get close to the fleet.
-----
The sinking of the Moskva is also a Russian error. We all know that the Moskva's RADAR system could see the drones. The sad truth is that the Moskva's sailors were themselves unready to watch a RADAR screen for hours, days, months. They likely got fatigue and sounded the alarm too late vs the aerial threat.
Or maybe command was not notified quickly enough. Who knows? Communication error? There's a whole slew of chain of command issues that could have happened.
But we all know that the Moskva has good enough RADAR to see all of those drones. Even in the storm they were in. So it's most likely some kind of human error along the way.
USA, and other NATO forces, have anti-fatigue measures (better software, better training). Furthermore, we run missions vs Houthis and gain battle experience, or also shoot down Iranian missiles on their way to Israel. These missions (exercises??) will keep our sailors in better shape than the awful training the Russians have.
> Anywhere near the coast of China, a warship is within range of truck-mounted anti-ship missiles.[2] Lots of them.
truck-mounted? Are you on CCP's payroll to downplay and cover the rise of its military strength?
Chinese navy has YJ-20 hypersonic anti-ship ballistic missile fitted on its Type-055 destroyers. At Mach 10 with 1,500km range, it is the most advanced anti ship missiles ever developed & deployed on the sea. YJ-20 itself is the ship-launched version of the YJ-21, which has been spotted on H-6 bombers for ages. With YJ-20 and YJ-21, you don't get to "coast of China" to experience their "truck-mounted" missiles.
Interestingly, you choose to ignore all these publicly available facts that can be easily verified and try to paint the Chinese navy as some 1980s forces relying on "truck-mounted missiles" for anti ship missions. Well done, you deserve a bonus for your strategic deception job!
Are you on the CIA's payroll to try to get CCP to waste money? I bet the truck mounted missiles are still cheaper. If they can service a target with a truck mounted missile instead of a Mach 10 missile, they'd be fools not to.
care to explain how the US doesn't operate such super effective trucks? Trump doesn't like them? or maybe the kick backs are not as good as battleships?
The other reply already mentioned HIMARS. There's also ATACMS, which are larger missiles that fire from the same platforms IIRC. The US also really likes to use air power against ships and keep them really far away from home turf, so they wouldn't have a lot of use for truck-launched anti ship missiles until things are pretty far down the shitter. It's probably not a coincidence that they also often seem to think the simple and cheap solution is beneath their dignity. That said, if I was in charge we'd have a lot more missiles.
The US navy is in freefall. The best we can do is build a 40 year old destroyer hull and an aircraft carrier class that we plan to be building for literally 100 years. Shipyards can't build anything. Every design is mismanaged so poorly and leached on by traitorous defense contractors so badly that we get essentially nothing but the bill.
I think they pretty clearly meant 'practical best' rather than 'theoretical best'. Theoretically we could be so much better, which is why everyone is so grumpy about U.S. shipbuilding.
For 'practical best' you'd normally point people to examples of warships the U.S. actually can build without much drama, but if you try this with the Navy you're basically left with, what, the last LPD class?
10 years ago you'd call the Virginia SSNs a success, but even those have now run into construction delays due to various issues, even as the Navy needs their #1 priority (Columbia-class SSBN, also delayed) to succeed to decommission the Ohios on time.
> think they pretty clearly meant 'practical best' rather than 'theoretical best’
I guess I question this, too. This “battleship” a cartoon drawn for the President. It might damage our fighting ability if built. But it’s not reflective of our practical best.
There is a broader, genuine criticism of American warship building. But this battleship has as much to do with that as do rubber ducks.
Read the original comment they made again. They weren't talking about the proposed battleship at all, but about broader issues the U.S. Navy is already experiencing trying to build the already-approved designs.
> It might damage our fighting ability if built. But it’s not reflective of our practical best.
Indeed, it is beyond our current practical best, even if we assume the cartoon would ever be built. Which is, I suspect, what elicited the comment in the first place.
Because this and further politicization just makes the decline even worse. This just caused the cancellation of the DDG(X), which I'm sure would have been its own boondoggle in time.
The DDG(X) was the destroyer the US navy wanted to build no? I thought it was a nice concept on what a modern destroyer should do m, what was your issue with it (and it's cancelled now? For sure?)
> The new Trump-class battleships will replace the Navy's previous plans to develop a new class of destroyer, the DDG(X). However, the sea service intends to incorporate the capabilities it had planned to employ on that platform into the new Trump-class ships.
Because US Navy procurement has been a disaster for over two decades now?
Just Zumwalt and LCS alone are like $50 billion burned up for nothing.
The Navy's issues with procurement go all the way back to the retiring of the Oliver Hazard Perry class without a suitable replacement in the pipeline.
Hulls last a really long time and the relevance of a large navy has changed. Keeping existing hulls up to date seems like a much better use of funds, no?
The hulls on many older US Navy warships are literally cracking. They can be repaired at great expense but at this point it's more cost effective to scrap the old hulls and build new.
It probably doesn't really matter, as this thing is never going to be built. I kind of suspect everybody is just going into "ok grandpa" mode until he loses interest and starts chasing some other half baked thing.
Not "wasted." Handed to allies of the administration. It's just naked kleptocracy.
I suspect that the "ball room" attachment to the White House will also still be a hole by the end of the administration, but a lot of money will get handed out.
There's also potentially a substantial opportunity cost re: parity with China in the near to mid term even if we don't actually end up cancelling the next gen destroyer in favor of this thing: https://youtu.be/qvUbx9TvOwk
Money isn't real. Yes, allocating funds to this means there is a large swath of the population (with accompanying hard resources) which would work on this when they could arguably be working more productively on something else. But would they be spending their time more productively? Keeping what little remains of our shipbuilding capacity on life support might actually be more productive than the alternatives, given how little of value the US seems to produce when it comes to heavy manufacturing.
"Spending billions" is meaningless concern until you ask the question: what would these people have been doing instead?
Of course money is real. Any financial movements humans make + the sovereignty of our respective states are completely beholden to purchasing power parity via the modern economy.
The "spent billions" isn't about me/my constituents/the US not having those billions. It's that those billions where finely calculated by (supposed) experts to help maintain PPP advantages over adversaries.
When one "side" starts playing pretend with money (IE; using 50 billion in western currency on the Zumwalt class of destroyers before tossing them) the other side doesn't do the same, and stop taking advantage of PPP.
It reminded me of Chinese style military naming conventions, which makes sense since for all the anti-China bluster, Trump seems to be a big admirer of the power Xi has.
As much as I love any opportunity to stick it to Trump, wasting billions of dollars is about the only thing the US Navy does anymore; in this case he's keeping them on-brand and on-mission. It's kind of hilarious they announced this at the same time as the Constellation-class getting canceled, just to make sure there's no chance the Navy goes even a single day without an active boondoggle of a ship which will never sail.
I mean, define "wasted"? Presumably money will flow to American companies, American employees, American steel industry and so on.
In other words, yes it is billions pushed back into the economy, and yes, there will likely be very little "permanent" to show for it (and presumably the navy won't be much better for it) but it's not like they're just burying the cash.
It's important to understand that for the military industrial complex the goal is to "feed the machine", not actually to produce anything. In that sense this money is not wasted, it's doing exactly what it is supposed to do.
Indeed. WW1 and WW2 battleships are incredible pieces of engineering and (IMHO) rather beautiful in their own way. And some of them were built in very short time frames when you consider they had no computers to design them with.
Based on them being involved in one battle in WW1 and being massively vulnerable to air attack in WW2.
It’s an exaggeration saying that they were outdated in WW1, as they basically acted as a deterrent, but it was at enormous expense and they don’t do much. Too big, too slow, too expensive. The argument was playing out even prior to WW1.
It doesn’t matter if you assume that large scale conventional conflict between the us navy and the plan over Taiwan is impossible in a world with strategic nuclear weapons, otherwise it very much does matter, because navies are built on the timescale of decades and the plans you make today very much determine the future you will live in 10/20 years from now.
Yes, the opportunity cost is the real problem with all of this. A navy takes approximately forever to build.
If we are extremely lucky the outcome of this will be increased shipyard capacity and refined shipbuilding practices just in time to switch back to building a multitude of actually-useful ships.
But most likely is that this ends up delaying the U.S.'s ability to build back its navy in time to matter, which is a tremendous issue given how we do our commerce and where some of our deepest friends are physically located.
If the navy diverts funds from the ddgx program for this, the usn goes from struggling to keep up with the plan’s expansion to being at risk of being completely outmatched in the late 2030’s / 40’s.
> The new Trump-class battleships will replace the Navy's previous plans to develop a new class of destroyer, the DDG(X). However, the sea service intends to incorporate the capabilities it had planned to employ on that platform into the new Trump-class ships.
I think there needs to be more awareness on how dire the navies situation is. Most Americans assume the 100s of Billions per year to the USN keeps us at some unparalleled level, but that doesn't seem likely to hold true.
The usn has consistently failed to procure any new surface ships other than upgrades to existing designs at scale this century.
In the early 2000’s, that didn't matter so much, but the loss of institutional knowledge, capability and manufacturing capacity is now at the point that it seems unlikely to be fixed without a significant amount of public interest and a huge amount of investment, neither of which seem likely without some crisis, at which point it will likely be too late.
Well before any "battleships" are built, we'd need to build up the infrastructure to actually produce them. This would presumably still be useful when the battleships get cancelled and we move onto a real program.
There are, realistically, two basic conflicts that we could get into, one where we have naval and air supremacy and one where we don't. In the world where we have basically no real threat to our naval assets then go big and don't worry about the armor. In fact, just take a bunch of super tankers and throw on as many VLS modules on them as you can. Done. This ship isn't that, as the article points out. In the other war, one where we don't own the sea, then the idea of armor is basically silly and your best defenses are numbers and size. The littoral has grown far beyond line of sight and is arguably the entire world at this point given satellites and the reach of modern weapons. In that world you want a lot, so you can loose them, and you want them small, so that a loss isn't a big deal. This ship isn't that either. It reminds me of the Homer[1]. If your entire goal is to show up in port looking good then maybe, but I doubt this ship is good at that either. The first step to looking good in port is is just showing up so smaller ships doing more port visits probably gets that job done far better. But I am a fan of an inefficient military. It is hard to fight if you have terrible weapons so go ahead! Build a terrible ship and spend a lot of money doing it!
>On the whole, it’s pretty clearly a grab-bag of stuff that sounded cool, thrown together without any real attempt to explain how is this better spending an equivalent amount of money on Burkes or on the DDG(X) program, which was going to come in around 15,000 tons, and which this is allegedly supposed to replace.
Yeah it's an ego project for someone with a fragile ego.
From the 1600s to immediately after WW2, Battleship meant roughly the same thing, not "fast armored ship with big guns", but literally "Ship fit to stand in the line of battle". So yeah it's not a WW2 fast heavily armed and armored Iowa class, but those are obsolete, so we should be happy.
If the guided missile cruiser is now the biggest meanest surface unit, I'm fine with calling it a battleship.
Also, if gun caliber and armor plate thickness and speed, etc are less than the Iowa class battleship, the above still stands. It just means that the state of the art in what the biggest baddest ship is has moved on.
The aircraft carrier in many ways already became the new battleship in 1942, and existing battleships became effectively second rate in the sense that a fleet aircraft carrier smokes a battleship, it still does.
Another way to think about it is that guided missile cruisers are kind of another evolution of the aircraft carrier, they launch large numbers of missiles at much less cost.
Of course, the reality is much more complicated. It's unclear how useful guided missile classes and nuclear powered aircraft carriers will be in a standup full blown major power fight, aircraft carriers have sure been nice for asymmetric warfare in relative peacetime.
Time and energy and willpower are very limited resources.
Unintentionally, but to incredible effect, the current American regime has exploited the deeply rooted need by rational people to counter nonsense with sense, as a means to whittle down these limited resources.
We’re defending against waves of shitty idiot drones with multimillion dollar missiles like this blog post. But I’m not sure what other option there is.
“The Homer” is best compared to the M2 Bradley, whose development process was described in the book (and later movie) “The Pentagon Wars”. Unfortunately, all large combat systems (most notably ships) tend to come with a grab bag of ‘features’ of varying utility.
The M2 Bradley is an amazing vehicle, which does not accomplish the goals which its development program started with (basically a low-cost and reliable armored personnel carrier). This is why the M113 is still in service.
They may be referring to the campaign Burton waged against the Bradley's testing program.
Basically he wanted the Army to do a bunch of tests we already knew the outcome of: that the munitions in question would defeat the armor. This wasn't some sort of scandal or surprise to the pentagon. No armored vehicle is invincible, and the Bradley is already as heavily armored as is practical to cross bridges without them collapsing, etc.
Burton made a ton of enemies treating this like some sort of huge scandal he was uncovering, but in reality he was distorting the situation, then used it to popularize his book.
Basically he's just a grifter, but because he was saying contrarian things a bunch of people who had no idea what was actually happening bought into his bullshit.
It's similar to what happened with the "Fighter Mafia" where the public latched onto it without understanding how utterly bullshit the contrarian proposal actually was.
Wat?! But I've already cut off the tags on my new Dept of War swag and apparel!
At least I have the new updated globe with the renamed Gulf of America. They promised to send overlay stickers once Greenland and Canada become US states.
The problem with drones is that there can be a lot of them, and they can be maneuvering. They can overwhelm conventional defenses. Lasers let you at least not run out of ammunition.
But how does a laser improve on that? They're slow and have to stay on a target for a while to damage it. Close-in defenses fire thousands of rounds per second and every single one of those rounds can take a drone out instantly if it hits.
Ignoring all the practical considerations, the one thing I am positively in favour of is naming warships things which we can all believe in, so USS Defiance is great. I've always enjoyed the US submarines San Francisco and even District of Columbia, and the Chinese ships Liaoning and Nanchang, as an example. But my favourite names have to be the British names Formidable, Invincible, and Audacious. Now that I can get behind.
I mean, they literally named an entire class of ships when they launched HMS Dreadnought - and also caused previous classes of ships to be renamed to "pre-dreadnought".
But they've always had a flair for ship naming - Erebus and Terror, famous for Franklin's 3rd Expedition were originally bomb ships (that is, armed with mortars instead of cannon) of the Hecla class and Vesuvius class respectively, so firstly, naming mortar armed vessel classes after volcanoes, pretty cool.
But then check out the names of Erebus' sister ships...
* Hecla
* Fury
* Meteor
* Infernal
* Aetna
* Sulphur
* Vesuvius
* Devastation
* Volcano
* Beelzebub
You'd feel pretty badass serving on the HMS Devastation.
Fun fact - HMS Erebus took part in the Battle of Baltimore, so helped inspire that line from the US national anthem about "the bombs bursting in air"
It's going to be the "cybertruck of the seas" is what it's going to be if it's not quietly shelved when he gets distracted by some other thing that offends him.
The Seawolf was kinda the first attempt at a next generation attack sub while we were still figuring out the technology, making it far too expensive. But it led to the Virginia class, which has gone into mainstream production.
In some ways there's a similar situation with the F-22 vs F-35, though those two may have a bit more of a difference on roles and requirements.
Are ships even defendable in the age of hypersonic missiles? It seems like, should a large-scale war happen again, it will look entirely different from the wars in the 20th century.
Ships are the only way to transport and deploy certain weapons across theaters; as such, there is no simple way to replace them. Your argument could be made in the era of Soviet anti-ship cruise missiles (and that argument was made), yet navies have continued to develop and deploy warships.
That is unfortunately a complicated trade off, involving initial construction costs, total capability, maintainability, and crewing costs. Simply put, two amphibious assault ships do not equal or supersede one super-carrier.
>Are ships even defendable in the age of hypersonic missiles?
Well China has been building aircraft carrier mockups on train rails in the desert to test something on them while they're in motion...so I'd say unclear
> Are ships even defendable in the age of hypersonic missiles?
Given 90s-era NATO air defences are shooting down Russia’s newest hypersonic missiles [1], I’m continuing to treat the category as more hype than utility.
That presumes no future innovation or improvement in defense systems.
Which with the way the US is being managed might be true, but generally there's no evidence that China has a missile which cannot be intercepted by refined means we already know.
A ship close enough to hit anything has always been close enough to be hit. Hypersonics are not revolutionary, countermeasures will evolve to address them the same way they have for every preceding weapon system. But ultimately, fleets need to be able to take a hit as they always have.
25% interception rate on shit tier Kinzhals last year, which allegedly required salvoing all 32 interceptors from patriot battery, a patriot pac3 mse, aka the most advanced operational variant from 10 years ago. It's dropped to 6% now after RU improvement.
Math basically saying ~10 kinzhals can overwhelm typical carrier group with couple flight3 Burkes assuming all Burke VLS was dedicated to ABM, which it's not. Extrapolate to a more performant PRC hypersonic, and interception rate might approach 0. There's nothing in US missile defense tests (staged ballistic trajectories / simple decoys) that remotely suggest they have capable interceptors or the magazine depth to survive even moderate amount of high end hypersonics. Which is going to proliferate, see PRC building $100k commodity hypersonics for potential floor. Bundle that with space ISR and expeditionary navy model is even more dead in 10-15 years.
Hence IMO it's rational USnavy modernization/recapitalization is such a shit show. US legislatively locked in 11 carrier navy with all the supporting surface fleet that entails. Shit needs to be built, by law, but there's nothing competent to build in face of AShM math, so keep grafting and fucking around. It's not like USN acquisitions wasn't shit fucked before Trump.
All of US MIC acquisition behavior makes sense if one accepts that navy is probably fucked (including subsurface), the only thing US really needs for hegemony (excluding PRC containment, which US functionally can't), is 100-200 B21s (naval tacair/rip f/a-xx likely also fucked) to bomb whatever mid sized countries they want with impunity without putting surface fleet at risk (imagine Houthis with hypersonics). Any legacy naval hulls, tacair frames with some modernization will still black magic overmatch vs everyone except PRC for peacetime dick measuring. TLDR USN can't do anything against PRC, but doesn't have to do anything VS everyone else. So USN does whatever it wants, which includes a lot of flailing because it doesn't really know what to do at all.
I don't think that taking interception rate as the only metric is fair. RU missiles have shown pretty low precision - and hitting a moving ship is much harder than hitting a stationary building, at least in my imagination.
Yes, hence RU missile shit tier, they can hit point targets at least, which is step above IR missile that is dog shit tier, area spam. Maybe IR high end stuff RU tier if we can disambiguate the recent UAE hit that is statistically suggest low CEP point target capability.
For PRC missiles, see tandem missile demonstration a few years ago, two missiles launched from different launch sites coordinated to hit moving ship at sea. AKA PRC already have the ISR / kill chain to hit moving ships synced to time and space. Something basically no one else has demonstrated. Now extrapolate that out 10 years, while they (and US) are proliferating spaced based C4ISR = basically any surface fleet anywhere is dead, and even if we downgrade to only static targets, that means all US logistics, i.e. unrep are dead which leaves surface fleet single deployment assets. DDG barely has enough endurance for a few days of high tempo operations (fuel and weapons), carriers has endurance but without replenishment, no ammo, and without DDG escorts no protection.
As I understand it, hypersonics only got the focus they did in russia and china because US missile defence had evolved to the point where it was too much of a threat to existing ballistic missiles. No fundamental reason to think hypersonics won't in turn suffer the same fate.
They transitioned to hypersonic development after US withdrew from ABM treaty in early 2000s, historically moving to hypersonic was not reaction to US having a working shield (it didn't), it was more proactive move demonstrate US pursuing missile shield is likely not ever going to be viable. It took another 15+ years for US ABM tests to consistently intercept ballistics, and even then under very favourable (scripted), not operational conditions, i.e. FTM44 in 2020 was first time US intercepted an "ICBM representative" target. Current US ABM defense #s is not remotely credible threat vs salvo medium/high end ballistics, i.e. current US has ~50 GMDs, it functionally doesn't matter for strategic level exchanges.
For theatre/tactical performance, again early Kinzhal was functionally ballistic and interception rate was ~25%, dropped to 6% when RU added some terminal maneuvering. So US has not only not caught up to ABM defense outside of North Korea tier threats, ABM defense currently on trend to lose the physics race (against capable adversaries). There are fundamental physical reason high end hypersonics will likely only extend the interception gap. The TLDR is terminal speed past mach 6+, the intercept window compresses so much it becomes almost mechanically impossible for interceptors, i.e. g-load on interceptors will physically break them apart. Kinzhal (which US/PRC categorize as ballistic tier) terminal is ~mach4, PRC DFs (US categorize as proper hypersonic) are estimated to sustain mach 5-10, i.e. high machs until final seconds, basically physically impossible engagement envelopes. DEW doesn't have dwell time vs hypersonic already shielded against plasma sheath. Current golden shield bet is on glide phase interceptors, which doesn't really answer magazine math, i.e. multiple expensive interceptors (especially midcourse) is going to lose the attrition game regardless, maybe not vs smaller adversaries, but vs PRC. Extra lopsided in context of naval defense with limited magazine depth where it's not even about $$$ but inability to defend against saturation.
> TLDR USN can't do anything against PRC, but doesn't have to do anything VS everyone else.
Eh the USN can still maintain superiority outside of the South China Sea which means control of global trade. It’s not like it’s useless or anything even if the Taiwan straight turns into a dead zone or if the USN has to worry about missiles from the Chinese mainland. China also has to worry about missiles hitting their mainland industrial centers and naval facilities too.
Look at DoDs China report last few years, specifically PRC fielded conventional strike. PRC DF26, H6xCJ20s already can hit every essential SLOC from Malacca to MENA at volume, DF27 reaches west coast and Europe. There isn't really anywhere except Atlantic (and south America) where USN can operate permissively, i.e. every shipping lane PRC needs (for energy in next 10 years) is already covered. As for missiles hitting mainland, we're really talking about attritional game, PRC A2D2 works as advertised and they can potentially blunt much of the fires from being deliverable to mainland, and there's also sheer scale asymmetry, i.e. PRC pouring more concrete in 10 years than US in past 100. That's just a stupendous amount of infra to break. Meanwhile DF27 can hit west coast, in a few years they'll have DF27+ that reach most of CONUS. The real question then is who can deliver more fires, can win attrition game, can reconstitute faster. And vs PRC, it may not be US considering they put so much fires generation on carriers that may not be able to deliver any munitions under PRC A2D2 and the 30-40 B21 replacement (we're talking 10 years out) barely replaces one carrier in fire power. Meanwhile PRC has global strike eggs is mostly in mainland based ICBMs that skips entire delivery vehicle middle man and can potentially hit CONUS and everything in between with high survivability. And ample surplus industry/construction sector to rebuild. The TLDR is once hemispheric hypersonic proliferates more, USN can't operate permissively in any of the theatres PRC really cares about.
But again that doesn't mean USN can't operate permissively vs literally anyone else, even on legacy platforms that still grossly overmatches every other adversary regardless of acquisition malpractice.
> Meanwhile DF27 can hit west coast, in a few years they'll have DF27+ that reach most of CONUS.
> Meanwhile PRC has global strike eggs is mostly in mainland based ICBMs that skips entire delivery vehicle middle man and can potentially hit CONUS and everything in between with high survivability.
You are just describing nuclear war here, which seems unrealistic to me. China knows they’ll lose ocean access and trade will be stoped, which means no oil, hence why they’ve gone all-in in EVs and “green” technology. Piping in oil from Russia or whatever is a fantasy - pipelines will just get blown up.
Chinese missiles flying all over the world to sink blue water naval ships also seems unrealistic to me. They have to find the ships, for starters. This is a feat much more sensible in and around the Taiwan Straight or the South China Sea. But in your excitement you are forgetting that while certainly China can rain down missiles on enemy forces in the region, those same enemies can strike back too. Or are these hypersonic missiles so scary and advanced and all allied forces will just have to sit quietly while their military and industrial equipment is bombed? If that’s the case, what’s China waiting for?
>
Look at DoDs China report last few years, specifically PRC fielded conventional strike.
Could you link to a specific paper or report that you are referring to? I read these from time to time.
You described nuclear war first with mainland conventional strikes. Regardless, 2025 DoD china report lists fielded conventional strikes with west coast on the map for a reason, they are formally acknowledging CONUS conventional vulnerability. There's popular discourse that CONUS ICBM strikes = nuke back, but that's like saying mainland cruise missile strikes = nuke back. Afterall US cruise missiles are nuclear capable (i.e. what Trump explicitly wants for Trump / Defiant class) and US cruise missiles designed for terrain hugging to minimize detection time, no different than low ICBM response time. Reality is, once conventional CONUS vulnerability exists, the hit me and get nuked bluster no longer holds. US planners now has to account for CONUS strikes... hence why golden dome is a thing, nice piece of security theatre for masses when PRC ability to hit CONUS becomes unavoidable. Like folks can dismiss it as Trumps ego project, but it coincides with US military officials informally acknowledging CONUS vulnerability in media last few years, now made formal with new PRC fielded conventional strike map.
>knows they’ll lose ocean access
Do they, or do they know they can dismantle USN ability to SLOC blockade, especially energy routes. Mind you US can still use CENTCOM forces and political leverage to prevent MENA producers from selling, but this subject is about navy and current PRC rocketry A2D2 is likely in position to prevent US from SLOC blockade.
>pipelines will just get blown up
Yes, incidentally the 2025 Chinese conventional strike map covers Albertan oil infra to US... reminder US still imports 30% oil due to refinery mismatch.
> all over the world... find the ships, for starters
See PRC launching 100s of ISR sats last few years, SCS has persistent coverage already, but now rest of world has decent coverage by this point too. Either way context is 5-10 year mega constellation roll out by which time there very resilient and redundant will be global ISR / kill chain. Their space infra has already moved beyond backyard in last few years.
>same enemies can strike back
Sure but in what volume? Enough to win attrition game? It's not just hypersonics, see PRC acquiring 1m+ loitering munitions, separate order from 1m+ drones, likely shaheed tier with 1IC coverage. Hypersonics for high end assets, there's stupendous low/mid end mop up fires asymmetry to dismantle industrial base within 1-2IC. PRC has the munition depth to win the attrition game. The side with most fires bandwidth can feasibly dismantle adversary ability to fire back. All this from mainland platforms significantly more survivable because PRC doctrine assumes being hit and designed to keep hitting back. At some point the theatre aimpoint math becomes self evident, PRC by virtue of simply being a massive country with ample hardened targets is in position to survive being hit while their adversaries are not. PRC adversaries has less fires to deal with more targets, PRC vice versa, i.e. PRC can be wounded, adversaries will be overkilled. This one of the most glaring asymmetries, i.e. US planners cannot get JP to disperse or harden.
> waiting for
PRC isn't trigger happy, either way every year that passes PRC position in theatre gets stronger, but most importantly autarky and global strike capacity also increases. i.e. in about 10 years, coal to olefin (petchem) and EV penetration trend lines will make PRC close to oil independent, - their energy autarky will exceed US domestic oil who won't fix refinery mixmatch in same time period. Which circles back to CAN/US pipeline vulnerability. Energy autarky mismatch probably most important consideration, even if PRC can break USN SLOC blockade, as I mentioned, US has other tools to disrupt MENA energy flows. Other capabilities like mega constellation ISR increasing prompt global strike coordination, surging SSN and XXLUUV output, lots of reasons to wait and build up. Ideally build up so asymmetry so obvious US compelled to leave East Asian on her own. That's the ultimate prize, not just TW>
see page 85 for fielded conventional strike. You can compare past report map, the new one doesn't even bother labelling 1/2iC anymore because those defense lines are functionally dead vis a vis PRC procurements last few years.
I don’t think so, because if China invades Taiwan or takes similar enough action, and the United States and Japan come to the defense of Taiwan, an attack on the continental United States would not just be disproportionally stupid, but it would be an escalatory mistake as well, because you’ve now just declared actual war on the United States versus your more ‘limited’ war with the aim of only taking Taiwan. You see the difference, right?
But for China to attack Taiwan and the US and Japan to strike Chinese forces, it sort of requires China to then strike US and allied forces throughout the entire region. Attacking Kadena or even striking mainland Japanese industrial facilities, shipyards, &c. And then facing retaliatory strikes on Chinese industrial-military targets seems about to be fair game, and of course China doesn’t view the loss or usage of human capital in the same way that western countries do. I don’t think such a scenario here immediately results in nuclear war, even if the mainland is struck unless the US or Japan start targeting first/second strike capabilities or cause mass civilian casualties. The reason being, well, China would have struck US and Japanese bases first. And frankly if they don’t do that in the opening salvo of the war they’re stupid anyway.
> Do they, or do they know they can dismantle USN ability to SLOC blockade, especially energy routes.
They can’t. This is nonsense.
> Yes, incidentally the 2025 Chinese conventional strike map covers Albertan oil infra to US... reminder US still imports 30% oil due to refinery mismatch.
Sure, in the unlikely scenario that China also attacks Canada (might as well attack everyone at this point), yes US imports go down causing consumer harm, but China’s oil imports drop to 0. When you think about attrition you have to consider attrition for both sides, not just one. China has gone all-in on “green” tech precisely because they cannot win in a war in which they are dependent on oil - see US actions in Venezuela and the Middle East.
> See PRC launching 100s of ISR sats last few years, SCS has persistent coverage already, but now rest of world has decent coverage by this point too. Either way context is 5-10 year mega constellation roll out by which time there very resilient and redundant will be global ISR / kill chain. Their space infra has already moved beyond backyard in last few years.
Ok and the US does that too over the next 5-10 years (assuming capabilities don’t exist today, though they likely do). Now what? China hasn’t really gained an advantage here, launching missiles all over the world could be misconstrued as a nuclear attack and requiring a nuclear response. Is China going to launch missiles at Bahrain, UAE, Korea, the EU, and everyone else? Doesn’t seem realistic.
> PRC isn't trigger happy, either way every year that passes PRC position in theatre gets stronger, but most importantly autarky and global strike capacity also increases. i.e. in about 10 years, coal to olefin (petchem) and EV penetration trend lines will make PRC close to oil independent, - their energy autarky will exceed US domestic oil who won't fix refinery mixmatch in same time period. Which circles back to CAN/US pipeline vulnerability. Energy autarky mismatch probably most important consideration, even if PRC can break USN SLOC blockade, as I mentioned, US has other tools to disrupt MENA energy flows. Other capabilities like mega constellation ISR increasing prompt global strike coordination, surging SSN and XXLUUV output, lots of reasons to wait and build up. Ideally build up so asymmetry so obvious US compelled to leave East Asian on her own. That's the ultimate prize, not just TW
You’re right about two things: China will get stronger and more capable, and it will be less reliant as a country on oil, but you still can’t fly jet fighters with EV batteries and the wealthy markets (EU, US) are turning away from EVs as domestic policy and spending money securing rare earth refining capabilities. All the time you give to China also has to be given to other countries to react and plan too - which I think is often overlooked because western news rants about western failures all day but can’t speak mandarin and don’t have a clue about China’s issues as well.
But I think what you’re wrong about here is the threat, precisely because you are providing a contradiction. There are two geopolitical things that matter here. One is Taiwan as part of the first island chain - I.e. good for US monitoring of Chinese naval activity, and second, the semiconductors.
The longer China waits, the less important Taiwan is to the US. It can build other facilities, semiconductor manufacturing can be invested away from Taiwan too. And as you are asserting, I think, allows the Chinese navy to go and operate in the Pacific with impunity. Frankly I don’t know why they care if the US knows where their ships are anyway. What’s the point of the forces when we don’t have any interest in war in the first place? Does China want to spend this money and then launch missiles at Houthi rebels? Be my guest.
But what exactly does that matter in the world you’ve described? For all of these things to happen on a longer timeframe, the US doesn’t have to “leave” Asia. What is China going to do if the US keeps a base in Japan or the Philippines? Bomb it? Ah ok, well now the US has also built hypersonic missiles and all of these capabilities (because we already have them today anyway) and now if they attack US forces the US gets to do the scary boogeyman thing that you’re asserting China can do and blow up all of their ships with indefensible missiles strikes because they know where all the ships are “because satellites”.
I just do not find “China attacks everything the US has ever built and successfully destroys it and there is nothing the US can do” very convincing.
Thanks for sharing the paper by the way. I’ll take a look. I have a book to finish and at 100 pages it’ll take me a little bit of time to peruse :)
Why assume PRC attacks US+co first? This 2015s talking point based on limited PLA modernization, use it or lose it force structure, so they would be smart to use first, then. 2025+ reality is PRC has survivable fires complex to dismantle 1/2IC anytime. They're in position to bait US+co into firing first if they want. BTW US coming to assist TW is already declaring full scale war over Chinese sovereignty / territory, there's no difference if US wants to limit (i.e. prevent landings) because TW scenario is full war scenario where PRC gets vote in escalation, western analytic conflation over limited/regional war is (mis)attribution to PRC previously not able to prosecute a broader war, but PRC will always prosecute the largest possible war relative to capability over TW, and now that includes CONUS. Sure PRC GAZAing JP/SKR, obviously JP/SKR will want to counter strike mainland, but that opens CONUS to attack and frankly that's a US alliance management problem, because ultimately broader war is net good for PRC strategic stretch goals - to kick US out east asia, that can really only be done by physically dismantling US basing in region, bonus if it deindustrialized JP/SKR who are peacetime competitors vs PRC, who again, is structured to retain more industrial base and reconstitute faster.
>This is nonsense
This is 2025, I mention 2025 DoD report for a reason. Look at the rocketry coverage - encompasses all SLOCs from PRC cost to MENA + 1500km, i.e. standoff carrier range. It's time to stop coping. USN surface fleet is on paper not survivable anymore, pentagon paper. Again once people accept reality of hemispheric hypersonic A2D2, everything about incompetent USN procurement makes sense. This has been obvious for years btw, those missiles exist pre 2025, the latest report just decided to acknowledge reality.
>hasn’t really gained an advantage here
Advantage is massive. First it closes disadvantage, US already has global strike expeditionary model. PRC equalizing = US losing advantage. PRC having more survivable and high-end fires = PRC can hit anywhere on earth globally within hour using purely mainland platforms not vulnerable to disruption, unlike US carriers/bombers with long logistics tail. This advantage potentially step down from rods from god. BTW US can have this too in SSGN with CPS, but we talking about a few 100 VLS tubes that needs days/weeks of prepositioning vs 10000s from PRC mainland.
>going to launch missiles
You know how US gets to simply bomb non nuclear countries with impunity. The answer is PRC gets that privilege too, if war vs US escalates, all global US military assets are on the table. Countries are going to weigh if US protection worth the risk and when they see US simply can't protect they have choices to make, yes this means US nuke umbrella gets will get tested.
> oil imports drop to 0.
> China’s issues as well
> other countries to react and plan too
What's PRC energy production composition? They make 4m+ million barrels, enough to cover all industrial use, i.e. they can run current industrial output on purely domestic oil alone. USN uses like 100k oil per day, PRC domestic production can sustain 40 USNs in perpetuity, they don't need to electrify 6gen. Most oil is used for transportation, of which really diesel is critical (freight). That's where their 1-2 million barrel of CTO equivalents, i.e. they can displace industrial oil with coal to maintain trucking fleet and ration consumer transport oil. How much transport disruption is function of EV penetration, right now a lot in 10 years, minimal. Reminder PRC is actually a continental size power with huge energy assets, not as much as US relative to population, but enough to prosecute forever war with PRC industrial base, i.e. the one that already outproduces everyone combined (as materially not value add). PRC is not Japan, PRC has functionally infinite resources and current mismatch is something that can and is being engineered around. PRC is also not west, because they have industrial base to build a lot of hammers, and eventually hammers get used. PRC is obviously not VZ/MENA who can't hit US back, while PRC can. IMO face PRC realities before fixating on PRC issues. As for other countries reaction/plan, it's factored in, reality is we know what level of infra expansion or acquisition west is capable of, we know PRC china speed trendlines, hence limit extrapolation to reasonable 10 year timeframe.
> two geopolitical things that matter here
> don’t have any interest in war in the first place
US+co seems to have interest in intervening in Chinese civil war, which itself exists due to US support over last 70 years. There's a world where US facilitates peaceful reunification on PRC terms and maybe PRC can live with relatively benign US hanging around in east Asia. But if transition not peaceful, then there is every reason to simply kick US out of east Asia. This key distinction, TW is political goal, kicking US out of east asia is geopolitical / regional hegemony goal. That's the overarching geopolitics that matters. Spheres of influence and all that.
> China attacks everything the US has ever built and successfully destroys it and there is nothing the US can do” very convincing.
It's very convincing because the flip side is US can likely destroy PLAN as well. When I say surface fleet is dead, I include PRC / everyone. The problem is USN likes to launch missiles at Houthis, US global security posture is predicated on survivable expeditionary navy. PRC is not. After both sides lose their boats, US loses most strategic posture, while PRC can rebuild faster. The point is US posture is uniquely vulnerable, because of course it is, PRC spend last 30 years specifically dismantling US force structure. US force structure have been distracted by GWOT, procurement drama... and just geopolitical reality of PRC industrial base, has having difficulty doing the opposite.
Because the US has no interest in a war with China?
Actually attacking the US is literally the worst possible idea for China though. They can win a short, high-intensity war over Taiwan and leverage US political chaos and dysfunction to achieve their goals, but attacking the actual United States would quickly, and cohesively force the United States to get its shit together.
I don’t have any illusions about American Exceptionalism, but China’s strengths in manpower and manufacturing capacity don’t have the leverage that you think they do when a land-oriented power (China) has to engage in warfare with a naval and air-based power. China middling oil production would be destroyed by US missiles and it would be unable to import more oil. That’s a big problem that a land-based power isn’t going to be able to easily overcome. But I guess as you say “China has missiles, China blow up all US forces everywhere” or something like that.
And even winning a war doesn’t “kick” the US out of East Asia. They can just maintain existing bases and naval forces. What’s China going to do about it? Are you going to bomb Japan and Korea? Launch missiles at Saudi Arabia since they aren’t selling you any more oil? The scenario you are fantasizing about which is effectively “China rains down missiles on everything and nobody can do anything about it” is really just not realistic and you keep assuming that other countries don’t have missiles or capabilities or the ability to cause significant harm to Chinese interests.
If you really believe that China launching an invasion of Taiwan (I don’t care if it’s an internal affair or not, China takes action against the US and we just sell Taiwan weapons and take actions against China and so forth) legitimizes striking the continental United States none of this technology you’re talking about matters because your argument is basically “everything escalates to nuclear war” so what does anyone care about how much the US or China wastes on military assets?
But China doesn’t have any intentions of seeing its civilization destroyed, nor does the US, so once you take nuclear war off the table, you have to manage escalation to avoid nuclear war, which is why China is building so many surface ships.
> When I say surface fleet is dead, I include PRC / everyone. The problem is USN likes to launch missiles at Houthis, US global security posture is predicated on survivable expeditionary navy. PRC is not. After both sides lose their boats, US loses most strategic posture, while PRC can rebuild faster. The point is US posture is uniquely vulnerable, because of course it is, PRC spend last 30 years specifically dismantling US force structure. US force structure have been distracted by GWOT, procurement drama... and just geopolitical reality of PRC industrial base, has having difficulty doing the opposite.
The PLAN doesn’t know how to fight a war. The GWOT and similar operations are done so the United States can continue to make sure everything works, logistics concerns are ironed out, and more. There are other reasons for these engagements, of course.
I don’t really accept your theory the Chinese military will just launch missiles and blow up all USN ships, which I think is a fundamental disagreement here and I am not convinced by your writing to change my mind.
> US+co seems to have interest in intervening in Chinese civil war, which itself exists due to US support over last 70 years.
China overplayed its hand with the seizure of Hong Kong, restricting rare earth exports from Chinese refineries, and so-called wolf warrior diplomacy. It had a very easy path to assimilate Taiwan without bloodshed but now it’s going to have to fight over it do no real good reason. The US and Americans in general don’t really care too much about Taiwan, and had China just continued to be a good partner and showed kindness toward Taiwan it would have won the long game and convinced Taiwan to rejoin peacefully. It’s really unfortunate. The US and China don’t need to fight, but I think Xi Jingpin specifically and China’s posture generall has caused the US to have to support Taiwan instead. There are a long list of grievances both sides can legitimately levy at each other, but I think China was the one to rekindle the issue while the US was thinking hey let’s all just trade and get along. I know you’ll disagree but I’ve reviewed enough of the history of both countries and the region to know that this is the case.
What is fuss over US coming to TW defense then? US wants to prevent PRC reunification regardless of method, that's ample reason for war. If US doesn't want war, just have state department tell PRC TW is internal problem.
> get its shit together
How, it takes years to build up modern atrophied industrial base + workforce. It will take even longer to degrade PRC industrial base. Reminder US vs Iraq took 5 carrier groups, favourable regional basing and unsustainably high tempo permissive operations 6 weeks to dismantle Iraq... scale that to PRC size... charitably 500x more industrially capable than Iraq with greater tech base, it will take US+co decades, and US MIC was much better capitalized then, and US industry more productive (as in actual material production not value add). Meanwhile, US basing and posture vs PRC is significantly worse than Iraq, i.e. relative fire generation ability is even worse at standoff range, assuming it even exists. It is innumerate thinking US+co can substantially degrade PRC knowing basic numbers. Either way this is dependant on PRC mainland being hit, is US going to permit mainland attacks from 1IC? What if PRC creams JP, PH for using basing to undermine PRC efforts? Attacking via proxies isn't some magical lifehack that keeps CONUS safe, especially with US basing. This isn't UKR where US has deniability shipping shit from Poland. Hitting mainland from theatre with US basing opens proportional CONUS attack.
> land oriented
Who cares? It's not about land/sea/air oriented, it's about long range strikes oriented, just because PRC doesn't double down on supremely vulnerable legacy navy/airforce to project fires doesn't mean they cannot prosecute long range fires. Again this is 2025, that 8000km DF27 land attack to CONUS exist for a reason. Other missiles to hit tankers/unrep within stand off range etc all the logistics chain that USN and USAF depends to even operate in theatre. There's a reason why is DDGX and FAXX getting the ugly step child treatment, because none of them or their sustainment are survivable in their platform range. When US depend on middle platform to deliver fires, and those middle platforms cannot operate because their even more vulnerable sustainment goes boom, US muh boats and planes is at massive long range fires disadvantage over "land" based fires that simply skips middlemen. And PRC gets to do that precisely because they have industrial base to make disposable single shot long range fires economical.
Extrapolate to land attack US infra with modest DF27 upgrade, that's all of CONUS oil infra going boom too. Everything US can do to PRC, PRC can do to US in short term, if not already because DoD reports tend to be behind the times. Who do you think will fare better then? PRC with 4x more energy infra for US to strike and magnitude more distributed energy infra. So yes, of course the answer is more missiles because PRC prompt global strike explicitly to attack CONUS strategic targets conventionally was written in PLA future doctrine as far back as 2010s. They explicitly are circumventing vulnerable naval fires for global fires straight from mainland because they understand US Navy+airfoce expeditionary model is shit fucked, having spent 20 years building all the tools to dismantle it. Meanwhile, US institutionally locked into shit fucked model, because again, by law US cannot divest from it.
>bomb Japan and Korea
Yes? If US drawn into TW scenario, escalation logic incentivized to align with geopolitical logic, which is to displace US out of east Asia, which calls for bombing JP/SKR/PH or anyone that assists US materially. They are absolutely on the menu because the gains are huge. As for Saudi + others, just US bases if they contribute to undermining PRC interests. If oil ain't flowing to PRC because US pressure, then remove US pressure. Again note all of CENTCOM is in PRC missile range, that is by design.
>nobody can do anything about it
Did I say that? I said PRC will receive counter fire, but not at scale vs what PRC can dish out. Nobody can do _enough_ about it, that's patently realistic when you look at stockpiles and force balance. Go back to the Iraq example. Now realize PRC has magnitude more than US+co in firepower targeted at JP/SKR/PH etc than US+co has via Iraq.
>escalates to nuclear war
Because I don't think it will. I think it's frankly cope rhetoric US delulus themselves into thinking US can maintain presence in another upcoming hegemons backyard because nukes. That bluff is going to get called because alternative is ceding regional hegemony aspirations forever because US cray cray and will nuke if they can't preposition on other side of globe. BTW PRC went to war with USSR, US in KR, shadow fought France in IndoChina, threated UK over HK, border skirmish with India, aka almost every nuclear state, over strategic considers much less important than TW. US threatening nukes vs PRC over TW isn't credible, nuclear umbrella isn't going to save JP/SKR/PH if they assist US in TW.
>China is building so many surface ships
But they're not? They have 300x military shipyard capacity than US, with CSCC producing more tonnage than ALL US postwar shipbuilding, a period where US was rolling out full carriers every year. PRC not doing that, they are keeping an absolutely modest navy relative to their productive capability. PRC military ship building is <1% of total shipbuilding capacity, every other naval power was dedicating 20-50% during peacetime. PRC match low end of that they're launching 80 carriers a year with dry docks sized to fit. PRC naval acquisition is best described as cautiously sufficient for regional overmatch, i.e. be more powerful than US+co in PRC backyard where they need peacetime presence. There's a reason rocket force is the most prestigious / pillar and reported directly to CMC before recent reforms.
>GWOT
C'mon you think GWOT built any surface warfare competency, see Yemen, see 7th fleet crashing left and right. It's negative experience, history has show correct doctrine + training > legacy experience time and time again.
>don’t really accept your theory... change mind
Don't? I'm not here to change your mind. This is public for others to draw conclusions based on argument.
>rejoin peacefully
Let's not pretend US isn't funding NGOs and various political groups to spike peaceful reunion efforts before HK. Reality post US sponsored sunflower movement was it's obvious if PRC wanted TW back before 2049, or prior due to generational voting habits, they'd have to fight for it. It just so happens fighting may ultimately be the PRC quiet preferrable route since retaking TW peacefully doesn't displace US out of east Asia, only drawing US into TW conflict does. So yes, I disagree, I think US overplayed it's hand pretending it can intervene in TW, and legitimizes PRC reason for extended war, and will end my comments here since impasse.
Well, it’s a big unknown. Let me lay out briefly why that’s the case at least in my mind.
Let’s say you are China and you’ve decided to use your military forces to take Taiwan. You know if you are just facing Taiwan alone you’ll suffer losses and ships will get blown up, but you are ok with that. Glory to the CCP and all. Sorry about those semiconductors planet Earth. Those facilities will be obliterated.
But… the United States and Japan (the two most important partners here in my view) are allies and they aren’t officially allied with Taiwan but are happy to sell weapons and, maybe, and you’re unsure about this, just maybe if China invades Taiwan they may say that this isn’t acceptable to our national security and we will take action to intervene, but let’s say there’s nothing in the cards to attack the Chinese mainland (frankly neither the US or Japan really have an interest in doing that).
So now you are thinking ok, if it’s just us versus Taiwan that’s a piece of cake. But if the US and Japanese militaries intervene and defend Taiwan, maybe your potential success rate drops considerably, maybe to 60% or lower. That’s a problem. What can you do about it?
Well you could… declare that war will take place just in the Taiwan Straight and surrounding area and everyone else’s country is “off limits”. Escalation means chaos. The CCP is all about stability, 100-year old plans within plans and all that.
But if the US and Japan enter the war, you could sink the entire US Navy but they’d have free rein to safely fly in missiles and planes and equipment to their permanent aircraft carrier: Japan.
How long do you think it takes for China to attack a US military installation on Japan? And at that point, what really is the escalation for the US or Japanese to, idk, conduct a limited military operation to attack a Chinese Air Force base in response?
The whole situation, at least in my mind, is so dangerous because the escalatory ladder is fast and steep. What happens if a Chinese missile misses the US base and kills Japanese citizens? How long would Japan put up with a blockade (because you (China) of course have to stop the flow of munitions coming to defend Taiwan), or harassing of Japanese trading ships? If the US had an airbase in Korea or Japan or the Philippines or Guam or Australia and the Chinese blew it up and killed hundreds of US airmen, how short is the escalatory ladder from that to the US and Allies returning the favor on any Chinese military installation?
Less humorously, the proposed Trump class "Battleship" is what a teenage armchair general would dream up. The kind of person who thinks Ministry of War sounds cool and cosplays as his favourite operator.
Whatever this febrile dream vaporware could be, it's still way too big for modern combat. Don't take my word for it, listen to a US Navy Commander, a serious person obviously, explain how it's terrible and completely inattentive to real USN needs and doctrine. https://youtu.be/0Zqa9azGo6M
Moreover though, it's another facet of the show of the White House occupant embellishing their ego and playing the reality star part through random, aspirational concepts of a plan.
PS: I dislike almost all Republicans and most Democrats, especially all of the ones who take bribes from corporations and foreign governments, so this isn't a political message but a reality statement.
We should christen it as a new class of ships: the dreadyep. With any luck, the gold encrustations will sink it when it is set afloat. Barring that, maybe some midshipman will "forget" to seal off a bilge port.
As a non-American living across the pond, the thing that is most terrifying to me about Trump's presidency isn't his authoritarian tendencies, corruption, cruelty, or criminality. The world has seen plenty of leaders like that. Maybe not recently in so-called Western countries, but it happens. What's novel is his sheer idiocy. Calling him a moron is an insult to the intelligence of morons. And what's so terrifying about it isn't that a man so stupid was elected president of such a big and important country, although that's bad enough, but seeing American titans of industry and other members of its elite - people possessing real power - seriously discussing, or even praising, the quality of the emperor's new clothes.
It's always like this with authoritarians. They become the arbiter of truth, and so they don't hear the actual truth very often. They become the giver of power, and so those who want power do whatever they have to in order to get the big man to give it to them.
So the only surprises are 1) how fast this happened, and 2) that "American titans of industry" are just power hungry rather than actually men of talent and brilliance.
> They become the arbiter of truth, and so they don't hear the actual truth very often
Yes, but they're rarely that stupid. The world sees a man say five times that he's lowered drug prices by 400-1500%. And that was just last week. For many Europeans it's remarkable to even come across a person that stupid.
> that "American titans of industry" are just power hungry rather than actually men of talent and brilliance.
I never thought they were brilliant. I just thought they wouldn't sell themselves so cheaply or would be so easily intimidated.
Except that this particular authoritarian in question is likely intellectually unable to parse the truth, while also being completely uninterested in it
How much is "a lot"? Trump has cut almost all aid since taking office. The EU is paying for the aid now. I'm assuming that the reason Zelensky cares to talk with Trump is for appearances, military intelligence, and to stall the restart of trade relations between US and Russia. The US has no real place at the negotiating table anymore. Everybody's just catering to Trump's ego, because it's the easiest way to stop him from doing any more harm.
I wish SNL was currently on the air and made a hell of a joke out of that announcement...
Here's my sketch idea: Naval officers unveil the ship, but when they pull the curtains, they murmur that it's smaller than claimed (The ships will be bigger, faster and a hundred times more powerful than any previous US-built warship, according to Trump(1)). Stormy Daniels shows up and says "Oh yeah, he likes to brag, but it's more like a mushroom.".
Cut to the bridge of the ship, the navigation officer comes to the Captain and says "Sir, the ship can't navigate properly. It seems whatever coordinates we set it always wants to head to... Epstein Island!"
Then the radar officer says "Sir, we are picking up something on the radar. It's a big, it's long...". Cut to footage of a big, black, submarine. The Captain interrupts with "That must be the Obama-Class submarine! The biggest, baddest ship we've ever had!", and the crew look at it in awe.
Then Obama shows up and lectures the viewing public: "Impressive, huh? But in reality there's no Obama-class submarine. The legacy of leading the country should be measured by how it improved Americans' lives, not by the ships and ballrooms." (this message needs to be workshopped...)
Stormy Daniels reappears and says "I know which ship I'd rather be on (wink).". Then fade out the scene with the crew panickedly saying "Captain, the ship is losing power! It looks like it's falling asleep!".
The Navy also needs the Constellation class frigate. The proposed replacement based on the Legend class cutter. It is basically a corvette like LCS on a bigger hull. The Navy doesn't need more corvette, they need proper warships.
Red Sea shows that ships need more defenses now that anyone can build anti-ship missiles and drones. Maybe they should have called Constellation light destroyer and DDG(X) a cruiser.
What the Red Sea has shown is that drone and anti-ship missiles are massively overhyped. A 40 year old ship design has fended off hundreds of such attacks without losing a single ship. Without even taking a single hit.
> The Navy also needs the Constellation class frigate.
The Navy needs ships it can actually build, the Constellation is trapped in an unending design hell and is already years behind.
I mean the whole proposal is nothing more than some of Trump's staffers coming up with an image and a bullet list and him liking it.
The Navy is gonna slow role this thing till he's out of office then reform the plan. Which is insanely annoying to me as a tax payer as we've basically had 25 years of the Navy's procurement being an absolute disaster, and now we're gonna lost another 4+ years over Trump's idiotic showboating.
It's all hype, as the article points out. "Battleship", it's not. No mention of armor. A battleship is supposed to be able to withstand a hit from its own primary weapon. The British Navy had a fad for light cruisers at one point, "eggshells armed with sledgehammers". They did not do well in WWI and WWII.[1] Nor did the armored battleships. No Japanese or German battleship in WWII survived a determined air attack. Yamato, Tirpiz, Bismark - all lost to air attack.
But they looked really cool.
Anywhere near the coast of China, a warship is within range of truck-mounted anti-ship missiles.[2] Lots of them. If there's a war over Taiwan, the Taiwan Strait will be a no-go zone for US warships. Being near a hostile coast held by someone with modern weapons is death to a navy today. The sinking of the Moskva was the first demonstration of this, and Ukraine has since taken out about eight more Russian warships and many smaller craft, using various missiles and drones.
[1] https://hmshood.org.uk/history/bcorigins.htm
[2] https://maritime-executive.com/editorials/china-s-df-27-miss...
> It's all hype
It’s geriatric hype. It tells you how the administration is thinking about the Navy: in terms someone born in the 1940s—and who never refreshed their assumptions since childhood—can understand.
What we should have are floating, automated drone-production platforms that can be mass manufactured themselves and shipped to right ahead of the front for overwhelming the enemy’s sea-based defences (while F-35s take care of SEAD). Instead we get Popeye with a rail gun.
A submarine automated drone production and deployment platform would be as damaging to a Navy today as aircraft carriers were to battleships.
Why would you want to produce drones from the same facility as you deploy them? You would terribly hinder each task.
It's a storage thing. You can make it so that the parts fit together better in pieces, then you assemble the pieces in theatre during deployment, so you have more drones in combat per mothership.
It's not like taking crude, cracking it, then refining the plastics, yadda yadda yadda. It's more an fast automated assembly thing.
Inside of a submersible warship really is not the place to be conducting assembly of sensitive electronics, and just because you call it "fast automated" doesn't mean it's either of those enough to be feasible in combat situations.
Right. What's more likely is a box launcher in a shipping container. Both China and the US have prototyped that. Launch from anything that can carry a shipping container. Such as a small, expendable self-propelled barge.
As an example loitering munition with foldable wings is already fairly compact. 2x storage space savings might not justify assembly space and effort
There is no might not, it just doesn’t. Someone played StarCraft and wants their carriers. Maintaining fielded equipment is costly enough.
That's fine, it's just the wrong nomenclature.
Lots of weapon systems already require some assembly before use (for compact storage and other reasons), but we don't call that "production" of weapons.
Sounds like a very noisy submarine.
The Arsenal ship concept[1] paired with the idea of "crew optional" ships would be inline with this idea and also integrate with the data link capabilities intended for the F35 (where it potentially fires missiles it's not carrying at targets it identifies).
The thing which stands out about VLS systems is the salvo fire capability of them: VLS tubes can launch an entire ships ammo complement in as little as 60 seconds or so. Which is a massive advantage because it means if a ship is targeted it can still potentially service every single target in range before it's in any danger of actually being hit.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arsenal_ship
Yeah, and the reason the arsenal ship proposal been shot down time after time, by many nations, is because when you actually dig into it, it's a bad idea.
There's a minimum tonnage needed to mount a big enough radar, have a hanger for a helicopter, and plenty of room for VLS, RAM, etc.
But past that, it's better to distribute your assets across multiple vessels vs building one dramatically larger ship.
It's far better to have 4x Arleigh Burke style ships than one behemoth that's 4x the tonnage.
Heck, this was true even at the end of the battleship era. Just look at how useless the Yamato proved to be. And it's doubly true now in an era of very sophisticated anti ship missiles.
Also, conceiving of this in terms of single platforms is also just totally wrong. We assemble surface action groups with a mix of capabilities that match the situation. Some of our Burkes focus on anti aircraft warfare, other's anti submarine, so we send a mix. And when they're on station each hull can be in the location best suited to its task.
So really you have to think about the whole package, and the arsenal ship just doesn't offer anything desirable on that basis.
That surely depends on the particulars of the anti-missile defense technology. If it turns out that bigger ships are actually more survivable because you can put more effective anti-missile defense systems on them, then maybe it makes more sense to put everything on one big ship rather than distributed across many small ships.
> The thing which stands out about VLS systems is the salvo fire capability of them: VLS tubes can launch an entire ships ammo complement in as little as 60 seconds or so.
And then it has to go back to base to reload. Reloading at sea is marginally possible. The U.S. Navy has demonstrated it recently, in harbor. But it's not done routinely with live ammo yet. This is a known weak point.
It's not clear when you would ever reload a conventional ships gun at sea either though, particularly on a modern transparent battle space.
It would still involve putting two or more ships in close proximity with heavy lift equipment for an extended time.
If this is close to the front it's a target, if it's not then you could reload VLS cells, and to do it your sacrificing the ability to put munitions on targets quickly which might just cost you the entire ship.
It's not even clear it saves you any reload time, since the only potential benefit is that shells are somewhat smaller then missiles, and even then once you account for magazine design and survivability I'd say the trade off is questionable at best.
You can helicopter shells and propellant onto the deck, then take them below for storage — as loading the guns from their magazines already happens.
VLS requires that you reload missile by missile at the place they’re fired from the top, which requires you have crane access to each VLS cell. You could replace the many non-reloadable tubes with fewer, reloadable tubes connected via loaders to magazines… but we’re starting down the path to re-inventing guns.
Helicopters don't have that much range - certainly way less then a ship does. So either you're close enough to a land base they can make the trip, or you're operating from another munitions ship - it's all the same problem.
And again, you're paying for all of this in the form of far slower firing guns with less range and precision.
Helicopters can operate off supply ships, 100km back from the conflict area and ferry munitions to your battleship that’s standing only 20km back. You can also use airdrops from cargo planes, delivery by small boats, or dropping back to meet the supply ship directly. None of those methods resupply VLS cells.
We’re also not debating a return to old guns — but to a modern version using autoloaders and shells equipped with guidance and range extension, to around 100km using modern techniques. Using barrages of all barrels, it’s closer to firing off waves of ~45 missiles at targets 100km away (9 guns, 5 rounds per minute burst).
The real difference is a battleship carries 1200 rounds instead of 120 VLS cells — and can replenish those rounds at sea. We gain that increased storage and endurance for decreased burst capacity, but remain over 45/min; excluding the VLS cells (which a modern battleship would also have).
The problem is 100km back just isn't very far, when missiles like the Ukranian Neptune have a range currently of 200km, and extended range variants in the works that push that to 1,000km.
That's a non-NATO, "country at war" system. Within NATO inventory you have the Tomahawk that dates to the 80s and has a range of 1,350km conservatively.
So if you needed to fulfill a long-duration shore bombardment mission against a non-peer opponent...sure, there's advantages to being able to loiter and reload.
But it seems abundantly clear that versus any peer or near-peer opponent, the closer to their coastline you get then the further in-land they can launch anti-ship missiles from - which they are heavily incentivized to do, and where the sky is also just getting more and more dangerous - i.e. a ship within 100km of a shoreline is starting to be in the range of medium weight drones, or autonomous surface vessels (which might deploy drones - as the Ukranians have been doing).
In your example, the issue isn't that the ship doing the shooting is in range: it's that the resupply ship is also in range and a better target.
You’re holding a double standard, eg, a carrier can’t engage from outside the 1000km+ of modern anti ship missiles either.
But that 200km is exactly my point: 120km back from the line of contact means that to hit it with 200km missiles, you’re within 80km of the contact line and the guns of my battleship for counter fire.
If I can force you to fire off your 1000km+ missiles at every transport ship that could potentially carry artillery shells or even dozens at my battleship to defeat its air defenses and sink it, then I’m accomplishing my goal of depleting your better weapons ahead of my main thrust. And surviving even minutes in a good firing position means raining down hundreds of 500kg+ glide bombs from the main guns.
A battleship is better than a carrier for “I’m going to sit here at 100km from the enemy and trade fire until they’re forced to go hard and overwhelm me”.
But the competition isn't carrier-based aviation, it's VLS cells on other platforms.
If you have more of them, then your ships can engage from further ranges meaning they can shoot sooner and faster while dealing with less incoming threats in response.
Because to defeat those incoming missiles you're going to need your own - which is what the Navy does now.
It's a comparative benefit problem: what's the floating gun platform doing thats worth the purchase price compared to just having more VLS cells which can do air defense, land attack, anti-missile defense and ballistic missile defense? Buying the gun platform is coming at the expense of that. If you can find more money to also have a gun platform, why not just buy more missiles?
The practical adversary the US Navy is facing is China which has large numbers of hypersonic ground launched anti-ship weapons. The fight never gets to shore bombardment, because either you deal with those threats or your ships get killed.
The problem is you're presuming that the adversary has a relatively few long range missiles - but the problem is, you have relatively much fewer ships then anyone has missiles. Killing the munitions ship is one option, killing the battleship - particularly at $15 billion a piece - also just takes the threat off the board. And you can do it before it possibly even gets in range.
Yes — I never argued against VLS cells, but against exclusively VLS cells. I agree with you they’re necessary, including in modern battleships for air defense.
What I’m arguing is that the threat generated by that bombardment capability — against islands in the ASEAN sea, against ports in China, etc — is necessary to force the kind of engagement you want. China has around 1300 medium range ballistic missiles, which is what we’re discussing.
Forcing China to overwhelm your single battleship (and support group, comparing BSG to CSG), depletes around 10-25% of their MRBMs, depending on their ability to penetrate your defenses. If they don’t make that choice, you obliterate the target and move on to the next one because you have 1200 glide bombs and the ability to resupply underway (similar to landing bombs on a carrier).
I don’t think we’re going to agree, but I appreciate you taking the time to give thoughtful criticism!
I read that as: it's a benefit to empty the payload if you're certain the ship is going to be sunk. Doing that in 60sec. prevents wasted payload or the opportunity for the enemy to recover the munitions.
Is that correct, or is it mostly to "get in quickly, get out quickly" then reload in safety?
The notion of a "crew optional" ship is a bit silly. It might have some utility for coastal defense: when it breaks down close to shore you can send a tugboat to tow it back. But I can't see how uncrewed surface vessels would be of much use to an expeditionary blue-water navy. Anything constantly exposed to salt water and vibration will break down. We're decades away from having robots that can do maintenance and repair.
>We're decades away from having robots that can do maintenance and repair.
Getting robots to fold towels is currently a struggle.
Towel folding is a solved problem over at boring old Chicago Dryer.[1]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YpTuwKu5fY0
Interesting. However, that machine is massive and specialized. I think we are a long way from generic robots being able to achieve something similar, let alone maintain a warship at sea.
Damn, I might be a robot. Hate folding towel laundry
slowly.
https://www.hullwiper.co/
but surely..
Routine maintenance like cleaning, inspection, and consumables replacement is very easily automated. Breakdowns can easily be prevented with a combination of redundancy and preventative maintenance. Without a crew you can eliminate many systems that are necessary for sustaining a crew's long term presence which leaves a lot fewer failure points and a lot of room for redundant systems. With modular design you don't need an advanced robot that can fix an arbitrary problem, you just rip out whatever module contains the problem and replace it. It's unlikely on any given deployment that you'd run into a particular problem that can't be handled by an automated system and must be addressed prior to the next return to base, but if you did then telepresence robots, or a team flown over from a nearby ship in the battlegroup would likely be sufficient. If your ship is having a problem that is likely to cause the loss of the ship and a team of experts alone is not enough to fix it, do you really want to have more bodies on that ship?
People are cheaper than all that tech.
Unmanned drones make sense because they are more capable. That's not the case with most ships.
People are not available though. Navies and militaries in all western nations have huge recruiting problems and that's before dropping fertility rates will shrink the entire pool of able bodied potential recruits.
Don't believe the what you read about dropping birthdates somehow being a disaster.
The US has always been an immigrant nation and despite the current administration that is still how the military is manned.
"U.S. Navy Achieves FY25 Recruiting Goal 3 Months Early"
https://www.navy.mil/Press-Office/Press-Releases/display-pre...
Not that impressive really...
"DoD IG: Army, Navy Miscounted Recruits With Low Academic Scores
The Army and Navy exceeded the legal level of recruits with the lowest acceptable Armed Forces Qualification Test scores, according to a report from the Pentagon’s Inspector General released this week. The services, which are in the midst of reversing years of stagnant new enlistments, each created preparatory courses that would allow potential recruits with low AFQT scores to spend weeks studying under military teachers, in order to raise their scores and then move to boot camp.
While both the Army and Navy have seen success with the preparatory programs, helping the services to meet recruiting goals, following the Pentagon’s guidance on how to count these recruits may have violated federal law, the new report alleges.
Under U.S. law, a service can only have 4 percent of its recruits that score in the lowest percentiles on the AFQT, unless it gets the permission of the secretary of defense, which would bring additional Congressional oversight. As of March 31, 2025, the Navy exceeded that percentage, without permission of the secretary of defense, with 11.3 percent of recruits falling into what the military calls category IV scores, according to the Dec. 11 OIG report...."
https://news.usni.org/2025/12/19/dod-ig-army-navy-miscounted...
This is why the US doesn't have a social safety net. Always someone desperate enough to get killed in a war nobody cares about.
Imagine seeing a veteran from the Venezuela campaign begging in the subway. How do you respond without bursting out in laughter?
That's a common misconception. The days of taking anyone who walked into the recruiting office are long over. US Navy recruits are, on average, regular middle class youths with a high school diploma or some college. Most of them could do fine in the civilian labor market if they wanted to.
The truly desperate people don't even meet recruiting standards due to criminal records, health conditions, drug use, low fitness, bad test scores, lack of a high school diploma, etc.
Not really, sorry.
https://news.usni.org/2025/12/19/dod-ig-army-navy-miscounted...
Tell me you've never been on a boat without telling me you've never been on a boat.
I've been on a boat. I also do industrial automation for a living.
Mostly agree. Battleships were basically obsolete already by the end of WWII. We haven't built a new one since then.
>It’s geriatric hype.
Almost. It's hype for geriatrics, or one geriatric to be precise. Think of it as the USS Trump Reacharound. It'll never get around to being built, but I'm sure the Navy will get lots of concessions from the Dear Leader for proposing it.
[flagged]
Yeah but the other option was a chick
I read an article shortly after Trump's first win which said that American women, especially the oldest remaining generation or so of voters did not believe a woman could be President, and so they were anti-Clinton in a way their comparable daughters were not.
At the time I found this an interesting comparison to the UK. In the UK my mother's generation (squarely in that same bracket) voted in Margaret Thatcher†, the "Iron Lady" and so they know a woman is no different from a man in terms of potential to lead. Which doesn't mean (see Liz Truss) better but also doesn't mean worse.
So in the UK you could definitely put a strong female leader at the top of the ticket and expect to get the same response, and in the US that seems likely in the future but it certainly counted against Clinton and even in 2028 it's probably a bad bet (assuming that is, that the US holds a meaningful presidential election in 2028)
† Thatcher isn't much liked, especially in some parts of the UK, but nobody is fooling themselves by thinking she was incompetent or ineffectual, they mostly thought she was bad which is different.
It's been said for a long time that the first woman President of the United States would be conservative. The stated rationale was that voters would somehow see the conservativeness as cancelling out the "natural liberalness" of a woman.
Margaret Thatcher does not dispel that somewhat hackneyed notion. Nor do the last two women Democrats in the U.S. that ran.
I would like you to please consider that we conservatives would vote for a conservative woman because she aligns with our values, not because something is "cancelling out" her woman-ness.
I'm not making a judgment about all conservatives. I was pulling up what was assumed an old "truism" and testing it against recent history.
Some of Britains most celebrated monarchs were women, so that might have some influence on how women in positions of power are regarded.
Both of these two contests were really weird. Trump is an extremely unusual Republican. Hillary was someone Republican mouthpieces had been priming the electorate to vote against for the prior 20+ years. Kamala moved to the top of the ticket late in the race, in an odd move, replacing a candidate whose approval ratings had been in (historically speaking) “you will definitely lose” territory for months already.
Both races were pretty close despite this.
Also, I can tell you first hand that heartland, salt of the earth, common clay of the new west Republicans, the worst of the worst from democrats’ perspectives, loved Palin. Looooved her. She’d have done better among them than McCain. That’s among hardcore republicans. How the shit am I supposed to believe Hillary and Kamala being women is the reason they lost, given that?
I think the “lesson” of “well a woman just can’t win yet” is simply ignorant. It doesn’t fit what we’ve actually seen.
You're correct. That woman (Clinton) had no chance in winning, because Republicans had spent years hammering her in anticipation of her inevitable run, and many Democrats felt she was chosen before the primary, leading to much apathy. Had Harris had more time, she could've taken it.
Or, as you said, had the Republicans put up Palin, I think the world would look veery different today. I don't think there would've been as much of an appetite for the populist trump nonsense today.
But it's all essentially naval gazing.
> and many Democrats felt she was chosen before the primary, leading to much apathy
Well, they would have a good reason to feel that, because Debbie Wasserman Schulz basically engineered it that way as head of the DNC, and what do you know, less than 24 hours after leaving that position was the head of Clinton's campaign.
There was no way the DNC leadership was going with Bernie, and leaked emails later confirmed that - they just said fuck you to their membership's preferences.
> Had Harris had more time
Not coincidentally, number one Google search on Election Day?
"Did Biden drop out?"
Very informed electorate...
> NAVAL gazing
I see what you did, there…
> Both races were pretty close despite this.
And Hillary Clinton did get more of the popular vote—not that it actually matters in America's cockamamie system: not enough votes were in the "correct" places.
My gut feel has always been that removing the electoral college would hurt the blue team and help the red team. Logic:
The popular vote is basically split evenly today (the usual talking point, 2016, was 62,984,828 Trump, 65,853,514 Clinton). 2020 and 2024 had similarly small-ish margins.
So take 2016: if we’d had a normal election cycle, and then the day after voting said “hey guys let’s do this based on the popular vote!”, Clinton would have won. But that’s not how it would be; both sides would know of this change for at least the full election cycle.
So now you start with a roughly 50/50 split voting base, with many Democrat votes coming from big cities and many Republican votes from Middle Of Nowhere, Kansas.
You win the upcoming election by gaining votes.
Republicans go energize the voters in New York, LA, SF, Seattle, Austin, etc, who are not voting today because they (correctly) know their vote doesn’t matter. They maybe change some bit of their platform to appeal more the big city voters. They can pick up millions of votes in relatively few places.
Democrats have to go win votes from Middle Of Nowhere, Kansas. Or more accurately, 500 small towns in Kansas, to pick up a few hundred thousand votes. There isn’t nearly as much of a depressed Dem vote in red states, simply because red states have small populations (see “land doesn’t vote!”). It’s an exponentially harder problem. While Democrats are trying to convince Uncle Rupert that FOX is lying to him, Republicans are filling Madison Square Garden in NYC with closeted Republicans and telling them their vote will count for the first time ever.
I just don’t see how abolishing the electoral college doesn’t backfire on Democrats. How wrong am I?
Today, people probably stay home in safe states - if you vote Democrat or Republican in California - you already know how the state is going to be called. Same can be said for Alabama. Why waste your time for a sure thing?
Some 65% of the population voted last time. Last cycle, there were some jokes about how only votes in the handful of battleground states mattered. A popular vote policy could activate a lot of non-voters who suddenly felt like their voice could have an impact on the result. How that would shake up, I am not sure. I have heard that most republican voters are already participating, there are significantly more democrats who stay home.
The Electoral College strengthens democracy by enabling local-election-observation to be a highly effective safeguard against fraud and voter demoralization.
At my neighborhood polling place, poll watchers (including local professors, blue collar neighbors, and even occasional UN election observers) volunteer to quietly monitor the election process, verifying that no registered voter is rejected or harassed. With a day off work, any citizen can audit their precinct to verify that end-of-day machine totals match the state's certified results, and could alert the news of any discrepancy. Any motivated citizen can trace their vote's impact up to the state level.
This matters because the Electoral College locks in your vote at the state level by using it to secure electoral college votes. Should fraud occur in some far away state, the Electoral College prevents it from numerically overturning the electoral college votes your state has secured. This federated system is more resilient against local failures.
By contrast, adopting a nationwide popular vote means that votes don't count until they're tallied at the national level. At the national level, a firmware flaw in a poll machine in Hawaii, or a lazy Secretary of State in Arkansas can cause the system to accept fraudulent votes that numerically overwhelm the national tally without ever presenting itself in a way I could observe or report. Without the Electoral College, Democracy loses a lot of its "go see for yourself" and becomes too much "just trust us."
> The Electoral College strengthens democracy by enabling local-election-observation to be a highly effective safeguard against fraud and voter demoralization.
The Electoral College is a bigger source of voter demoralization than anything that exists in any modern representative democracy which doesn't have the Electoral College. (FPTP by itself is bad, but even other systems have FPTP, don't have nearly the degree and persistence of voter demoralization seen in the US.)
Like, I can see how one might utter this sentence in an alternate universe where the US was the only approximation of representative democracy that ever existed and where every commentary was purely theoretical with no concrete comparisons to make, but in the actual world we live in, where there are plenty of concrete alternatives and whole bodies of comparative study, it is beyond ridiculous.
You are correct, because the current implementation of the electoral college is currently synonymous with "winner takes all" in all but two states - ensuring no opposing party turnout in states that are a foregone conclusion. If the winner-takes-all system were removed but the electoral college were still intact, Democrats would never win another election.
I don't think that can be right. The Democrats have recently won both the House and the Senate. In such an election, if "winner take all" is abolished, how would they not win the presidency?
Because in states like California, Colorado, etc., vast swathes of Republicans do not bother to vote because their vote is overridden. The numbers don't work in reverse.
Just look at the county maps within blue states: these elections you speak of relied on those folks being entirely disenfranchised.
Of course it works in reverse. Plenty of Democrats are not going to bother to waste their time in California when the current electoral outcome is a foregone conclusion. Similar with Republicans in Mississippi.
If the rules changed to a popular vote where even "safe" states were up for grabs, I think there would be lots of previously uncounted "dark matter" voters who would activate and would significantly impact the outcome.
> Of course it works in reverse
This math doesn't work in reverse because there aren't as many applicable people or relevant districts in the rest of the states.
Mississippi has far fewer total disenfranchised Democrats (in both absolute number, district count, etc.) than California has disenfranchised Republicans.
Without extreme gerrymandering, there simply aren't enough eligible-to-be-swung electoral votes to meaningfully benefit Democrats in rural states.
You do not need disenfranchisement, just apathetic voters who do not currently contribute. Right now there are ~23 million voters registered in California. 45% registered D, 25 %R, giving absolute numbers of 10 million D, and ~6 million R. Which you can handwave is 4 million Ds who know they do not need to contribute - their neighbor has their back to secure the state electoral votes.
Looking at the US as a whole, there are 44 million registered D with 37 million R. If you could round up all affiliated voters, Dems win the presidency every election if going by popular vote[0].
[0] https://usafacts.org/articles/how-many-voters-have-a-party-a...
Yeah, I think that after 2024 neither political party is likely to run a woman for president for the next generation at a minimum, and I think the voters agree.
(I don’t think that’s GOOD, mind you, but twice bitten)
I see no reason why both parties should not try.
Nikki Haley did very well in the primary against a more well known Ron DeSantis & Chris Christie. We have had multiple governors.
The only 2 that have run are not a good example.
A lot of people had strong opinions on Hillary that had nothing to do with her politics or leadership. A lot didn't want another 4-8 years of Clinton/Bush after 28 years depending on how you count Bush Sr. You could even add another 4 to that for Hillary's 4 yrs of influence as Secretary of State.
Harris wasn't popular in the primaries, many thought she wasn't deserving of the VP & she was part of an unpopular White House that was given a few ticking time bombs that they didn't properly diffuse. They also failed miserably to communicate with the public.
I don’t think Democrats will. I did think there’s a non-trivial chance of an Ivanka ticket depending on how the family brand is doing by then. He’s used to thinking in terms of nepotism and his sons have the charisma of floor wax.
That’s very charitable. Floor wax has utility.
I know you being somewhat sarcastic, but the problem is the democrats put forward a checkbox-ticking uninspired candidate that had no business running for president - which I say based on her atrocious record in California and as VP. Her gender doesn’t factor into this.
Or in the case of Clinton, the party used undemocratic means to counter a political groundswell for a candidate they didn’t like, triggering an apathetic exit and no turnout for the most important voting bloc.
Most critically, the party seems utterly incapable of learning from these mistakes, and only doubles down on the worst decisions in the next election.
As it stands, we’d probably get a trans candidate (if there is one available) in the next presidential election. Which I’d want to celebrate.. but under present circumstances it would lead to an absolute electoral defeat. The Democratic Party leadership needs to learn to read the f$@!ing room, and put forward candidates with broad appeal.
> the democrats put forward a checkbox-ticking uninspired candidate that had no business running for president
So you're saying the playfield was even. And the man still won.
Bernie is the closer analog to Trump in the Democratic Party, at least for this comparison. Trump is not a checkbox filling candidate by any measure. He was the protest vote against the system.
Certainly the first time he ran. Still "no business running for president" though.
Even the second time, for different reasons. There was a lot of anger at how the Democratic Party kept the details of Biden’s decline hidden, and then did an emergency switcharoo at the last minute without a second primary. A lot of dem voters felt disenfranchised, and didn’t bother voting, or filed a protest vote thinking Trump would be as ineffectual the second time around as he was the first.
You might consider the field even for other reasons (which would make your comment something of a non-sequitur), but those adjectives certainly do not apply to Trump, regardless of what you think of the man and his politics. Trump very famously did not tick GOP checkboxes, and he has inspired a cultish following in a way that Clinton/Biden/Harris clearly cannot.
I kinda hate that we're apparently selecting for "best cult leader" now.
Surely this wasn't what the Greeks intended when they invented democracy.
No one intended it, but this failure mode is covered quite extensively in Plato’s Republic.
Please consider that Republicans voted for Sarah Palin.
How did she do in the primaries?
I blame the Primaries. The dogs choose the doggiest candidate and the cats choose the cattiest. The llamas and raccoons of Canidsas and Califelinia don’t even bother voting because the dog and cat candidates in these dog and cat voting states have always been and will continue to be in office term after term. The presidential race boils down to a handful of swing voters in purple Pettsylvania and Furrida.
Converting this sentence to singular form instead of plural seems apropos.
US WWII battleships survived many determined air attacks in the Pacific Theater. They were heavily modified to carry more anti-aircraft cannons with huge supplies of ammunition. Improvements in radar, proximity fuses, fire control, and tactical doctrine proved to be extremely effective. Japanese kamikaze aircraft were conceptually similar to modern cruise missiles, just slower.
> Anywhere near the coast of China, a warship is within range of truck-mounted anti-ship missiles.[2] Lots of them. If there's a war over Taiwan, the Taiwan Strait will be a no-go zone for US warships.
Not to mention China's attack submarines, with their own anti-ship missiles as well as old-fashioned torpedoes. They have proven their ability to pop up and say "hello!" to US warships in the past. [0] Getting that close wouldn't be as easy when everyone is on a wartime footing, but then again, US ships would be steaming right towards them...
[0] https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2007/january/worl...
The Taiwan strait is too shallow for submarines to operate, so in a hypothetical conflict, China's subs will be much further out, trying to keep US strike groups far from the island, while also securing China's supply lines through Malacca.
Note this is one of the material motivations for the CCP gaining control over Taiwan. They'd quite like to move their submarine basing to the east side of the island as a practical matter. It's got deep water and plenty of cliffs/mountains suitable for hardened docks/shelters.
> China's subs will be much further out, trying to keep US strike groups far from the island
I agree that's generally true and I didn't mean to imply otherwise. Thinking it through, though: if Japan is party to the conflict its naval assets are likely to be much closer to China, and China will need to keep some assets nearby in the East China Sea to honor the threat regardless.
To be honest the thing that's puzzled me about the Izumo-class ships since I read about them and the conversion they are undergoing to carry F-35Bs is where exactly they'd be safe to operate in a conflict against China. It's not like those planes have great range, and it's not like refueling is usually going to be an option, so if they're going to be put to use those ships are going to be in range of an awful lot of stuff. And what a juicy target for China.
> The Taiwan strait is too shallow for submarines to operate
Is that true of China's smallest diesel-electric attack subs? I'd think the reason for them not to operate there would be a lack of targets.
edit: I take the latter part back. Apparently mine-laying in the straight by US submarines is hypothetically something that could happen in the conflict, and that would certainly constitute a target for China
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2023/december/you...
> The Taiwan strait is too shallow for submarines to operate
Welcome to 2025. How about those unmanned submarines that can be made dirty cheap?
>The British Navy had a fad for light cruisers at one point, "eggshells armed with sledgehammers".
Do you mean 'battle cruisers'?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battlecruiser
'Light cruisers' were different again.
>No Japanese or German battleship in WWII survived a determined air attack. Yamato, Tirpiz, Bismark - all lost to air attack.
Bismark was finished off by surface ships after the initial air attack.
Tirpitz took many sorties to sink.
The sinking of the British Prince of Wales and Repulse by the Japanese is probably a better example of how battleships became vulnerable to airpower.
> The sinking of the British Prince of Wales and Repulse by the Japanese is probably a better example of how battleships became vulnerable to airpower.
In retrospect the Japanese got a bit lucky there; subsequent air attacks on battleships show they can be remarkably tough. Musashi took 19 torpedo and 17 bomb hits to sink.
But these days you’re defending against the likes of squadrons of low flying B52s firing 20 (possibly nuclear) cruise missiles each. The bombers can fly back and re-arm much more quickly than any fleet, and there are a lot more bombers than ships. Add in submarines, destroyers and other platforms with even more missiles and I doubt any large ship or fleet will last long in any serious conflict.
Sure, I wasn't trying to defend this silly idea of bringing back battleships.
The story ahead of the Tirpiz sinking is fascinating [0], right up there with the account in Blind Man's Bluff of Ivy Bells [1].
0. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Source
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Ivy_Bells
Worth noting that the attack on the Bismarck was by biplane Gloucester gladiators which were outdated even at the start of the war.
Compare them to the planes that carried out attacks in the Pacific theatre. The Grumman Avenger was maybe 2 generations newer (and actually remained in service until the 1960s(
The Bismark was hit by 2 torpedoes from Faery Swordfish torpedo bombers (not Gloucester Gladiators).
While the Swordfish looked rather outdated, they were very successful as torpedo bombers.
Yes! The Swordfish - completely right. Not sure why I remembered otherwise.
Was the Swordfish successful? I think it was used at Narvik but it was slow and not very manoeuvrable.
From wikipedia:
"Despite being obsolescent, the Swordfish achieved some spectacular successes during the war, including sinking one battleship and damaging two others belonging to the Regia Marina (the Italian navy) during the Battle of Taranto, and the famous attack on the German battleship Bismarck, which contributed to her eventually being sunk. Swordfishes sank a greater tonnage of Axis shipping than any other Allied aircraft during the war. The Swordfish remained in front-line service until V-E Day, having outlasted some of the aircraft intended to replace it."
They also took part in the Norwegian campaign, the (still controversial) attack on Mers-el-Kébir, the defense of Malta and the Battle of Cape Matapan.
The fact that was slow had some advantages for launching torpedoes. I've also heard it said that the Bismarck struggled to shoot them down because its fire control systems were not calibrated for planes that slow (don't know if that is true).
"Indeed, its takeoff and landing speeds were so low that, unlike most carrier-based aircraft, it did not require the carrier to be steaming into the wind. On occasion, when the wind was right, Swordfish were flown from a carrier at anchor."
Despite looking like something from WW1, they only entered service in 1936.
There is one on display at the Imperial War museum in Duxford, UK.
My father had a friend who flew Swordfishes in WW2. He was quite a character.
The Bismark was also attacked by biplanes with defective torpedos (thankfully, that saved HMS Sheffield). Basically only two torpedos even hit the german battleship.
Presumably because the british torpedos were so awful, Tirpitz was attacked with regular bombs, which meant they were using the worst method of sinking a ship, from the top down, and so it didn't do much until they whipped out the ultra heavy ones. And it's not like the attacks were going poorly, Tirpitz was taking the hits because it could not kill the planes.
So what would a guided missile battleship look like?
my guess would be trident sized(2m) silos as the main battery and you fill them with vls cells as a working battery. for armor It needs to be able to defend agenst it's own gun right, so that would probably be a bunch of missile defense systems.
It is often said that aircraft carriers replaced battleships but I don't think that is the case, I think aircraft carriers are kind of their own thing and the battleship role was actually replaced by ballistic missile submarines. Think about it, where are the big guns in the navy located? And the more tenuous but fun argument, look how the ships are named, battleships got state names, SSBN's got state names coincidence, I think not.
Battleships are meant to fight other battleships. And you don't nuke ships. They are a relic from WWI when ships still had to engage each other directly.
They also filled a shore bombardment role. But you also don't use nukes for that (rather modern aircraft).
Disclaimer: IANAS (I Am Not A Squid)
> And you don't nuke ships
Not for lack of trying.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UUM-44_SUBROC
And the Iowa battle ships were later equipped to handle "special weapons"
But in seriousness, the restraint shown in the use of nuclear weapons is amazing, one day the genie will be let out of the lamp but it hasn't yes.
On the topic of genies https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIR-2_Genie (sigh) yes an air to air missile with a nuclear warhead was not only invented it was built and deployed... With how hard we were actively flirting with the demon that is nuclear war it is incredible that anyone is still alive.
> Anywhere near the coast of China, a warship is within range of truck-mounted anti-ship missiles.[2] Lots of them.
Yes, which is why the DDG(X) class has loads of stealth built in, to make it harder for those missiles to lock on.
One of the most important tools for fighting missiles is... an aircraft carrier. Early warning air systems (E2 Hawkeye), interceptors (F35), mostly for blowing up scouting craft.
Missiles can only home into what they can detect and see. Blowbup their eyes (RADAR systems) and they are flying blind. It's a lot of ocean out there and the horizon is surprisingly short.
Flight is your best way to cover a lot of ocean and find an enemy, but anything flying should be taken out by an F35.
--------
I'm not so against a rail gun or any of these future weapons per se. IIRC Japan has deployed a rail gun and they are an ally, with the right R&D team / licensing we might be able to get a working design.
But you know, that depends on how well Japans Railgun works. Ditto with laser systems and whatnot: as long as we test the crap out of them it's fine to deploy.
> The sinking of the Moskva was the first demonstration of this, and Ukraine has since taken out about eight more Russian warships and many smaller craft, using various missiles and drones.
Moskva is barely comparable to a singular US Destroyer, let alone a cruiser or larger boat.
And USA deploys large teams of Destroyers to help watch each other (and protect the carrier at the core of their fleet).
I'd expect that a drone being launched at a US Carrier strike group would simply be gunned down by the machine guns of an F35, long before they get close to the fleet.
-----
The sinking of the Moskva is also a Russian error. We all know that the Moskva's RADAR system could see the drones. The sad truth is that the Moskva's sailors were themselves unready to watch a RADAR screen for hours, days, months. They likely got fatigue and sounded the alarm too late vs the aerial threat.
Or maybe command was not notified quickly enough. Who knows? Communication error? There's a whole slew of chain of command issues that could have happened.
But we all know that the Moskva has good enough RADAR to see all of those drones. Even in the storm they were in. So it's most likely some kind of human error along the way.
USA, and other NATO forces, have anti-fatigue measures (better software, better training). Furthermore, we run missions vs Houthis and gain battle experience, or also shoot down Iranian missiles on their way to Israel. These missions (exercises??) will keep our sailors in better shape than the awful training the Russians have.
> Anywhere near the coast of China, a warship is within range of truck-mounted anti-ship missiles.[2] Lots of them.
truck-mounted? Are you on CCP's payroll to downplay and cover the rise of its military strength?
Chinese navy has YJ-20 hypersonic anti-ship ballistic missile fitted on its Type-055 destroyers. At Mach 10 with 1,500km range, it is the most advanced anti ship missiles ever developed & deployed on the sea. YJ-20 itself is the ship-launched version of the YJ-21, which has been spotted on H-6 bombers for ages. With YJ-20 and YJ-21, you don't get to "coast of China" to experience their "truck-mounted" missiles.
Interestingly, you choose to ignore all these publicly available facts that can be easily verified and try to paint the Chinese navy as some 1980s forces relying on "truck-mounted missiles" for anti ship missions. Well done, you deserve a bonus for your strategic deception job!
Are you on the CIA's payroll to try to get CCP to waste money? I bet the truck mounted missiles are still cheaper. If they can service a target with a truck mounted missile instead of a Mach 10 missile, they'd be fools not to.
care to explain how the US doesn't operate such super effective trucks? Trump doesn't like them? or maybe the kick backs are not as good as battleships?
If Himars count as missile trucks then they do. Sometimes they just park one on a ship deck
Does the US do that? I only recall hearing about that kind of shenanigan from Ukraine.
The other reply already mentioned HIMARS. There's also ATACMS, which are larger missiles that fire from the same platforms IIRC. The US also really likes to use air power against ships and keep them really far away from home turf, so they wouldn't have a lot of use for truck-launched anti ship missiles until things are pretty far down the shitter. It's probably not a coincidence that they also often seem to think the simple and cheap solution is beneath their dignity. That said, if I was in charge we'd have a lot more missiles.
The US navy is in freefall. The best we can do is build a 40 year old destroyer hull and an aircraft carrier class that we plan to be building for literally 100 years. Shipyards can't build anything. Every design is mismanaged so poorly and leached on by traitorous defense contractors so badly that we get essentially nothing but the bill.
> best we can do
Why would you take this as an indication of the “best we can do”?
I think they pretty clearly meant 'practical best' rather than 'theoretical best'. Theoretically we could be so much better, which is why everyone is so grumpy about U.S. shipbuilding.
For 'practical best' you'd normally point people to examples of warships the U.S. actually can build without much drama, but if you try this with the Navy you're basically left with, what, the last LPD class?
10 years ago you'd call the Virginia SSNs a success, but even those have now run into construction delays due to various issues, even as the Navy needs their #1 priority (Columbia-class SSBN, also delayed) to succeed to decommission the Ohios on time.
> think they pretty clearly meant 'practical best' rather than 'theoretical best’
I guess I question this, too. This “battleship” a cartoon drawn for the President. It might damage our fighting ability if built. But it’s not reflective of our practical best.
There is a broader, genuine criticism of American warship building. But this battleship has as much to do with that as do rubber ducks.
> But it’s not reflective of our practical best.
Read the original comment they made again. They weren't talking about the proposed battleship at all, but about broader issues the U.S. Navy is already experiencing trying to build the already-approved designs.
> It might damage our fighting ability if built. But it’s not reflective of our practical best.
Indeed, it is beyond our current practical best, even if we assume the cartoon would ever be built. Which is, I suspect, what elicited the comment in the first place.
Because this and further politicization just makes the decline even worse. This just caused the cancellation of the DDG(X), which I'm sure would have been its own boondoggle in time.
The DDG(X) was the destroyer the US navy wanted to build no? I thought it was a nice concept on what a modern destroyer should do m, what was your issue with it (and it's cancelled now? For sure?)
https://www.war.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/436695...
> The new Trump-class battleships will replace the Navy's previous plans to develop a new class of destroyer, the DDG(X). However, the sea service intends to incorporate the capabilities it had planned to employ on that platform into the new Trump-class ships.
Because US Navy procurement has been a disaster for over two decades now?
Just Zumwalt and LCS alone are like $50 billion burned up for nothing.
The Navy's issues with procurement go all the way back to the retiring of the Oliver Hazard Perry class without a suitable replacement in the pipeline.
Because there's no secret group of competent people waiting in the wings.
The military-industrial complex we have is the only one we got.
One project becoming a boondoggle is evidence we're not living up to our potential. Every project becoming a boondoggle is evidence we are.
I'm not saying its the best we should do. But its the best we are capable of doing.
Hulls last a really long time and the relevance of a large navy has changed. Keeping existing hulls up to date seems like a much better use of funds, no?
The hulls on many older US Navy warships are literally cracking. They can be repaired at great expense but at this point it's more cost effective to scrap the old hulls and build new.
https://www.twz.com/sea/navys-cruiser-modernization-a-lesson...
Also, they are being loaded with equipment far over their initial design tonnage and power capabilities.
It probably doesn't really matter, as this thing is never going to be built. I kind of suspect everybody is just going into "ok grandpa" mode until he loses interest and starts chasing some other half baked thing.
> It probably doesn't really matter
Millions—if not billions—of dollars are likely to be wasted on this over the coming years.
Don't worry - we're dismantling our science and research infrastructure and cutting welfare programs so it all evens out.
Not "wasted." Handed to allies of the administration. It's just naked kleptocracy.
I suspect that the "ball room" attachment to the White House will also still be a hole by the end of the administration, but a lot of money will get handed out.
That’s where the Trump dynasty will live in the future, in the bunker.
There's also potentially a substantial opportunity cost re: parity with China in the near to mid term even if we don't actually end up cancelling the next gen destroyer in favor of this thing: https://youtu.be/qvUbx9TvOwk
Money isn't real. Yes, allocating funds to this means there is a large swath of the population (with accompanying hard resources) which would work on this when they could arguably be working more productively on something else. But would they be spending their time more productively? Keeping what little remains of our shipbuilding capacity on life support might actually be more productive than the alternatives, given how little of value the US seems to produce when it comes to heavy manufacturing.
"Spending billions" is meaningless concern until you ask the question: what would these people have been doing instead?
Of course money is real. Any financial movements humans make + the sovereignty of our respective states are completely beholden to purchasing power parity via the modern economy.
The "spent billions" isn't about me/my constituents/the US not having those billions. It's that those billions where finely calculated by (supposed) experts to help maintain PPP advantages over adversaries.
When one "side" starts playing pretend with money (IE; using 50 billion in western currency on the Zumwalt class of destroyers before tossing them) the other side doesn't do the same, and stop taking advantage of PPP.
At least the name Golden Fleet makes sense since everything the US military buys is priced like it's made of solid gold.
It reminded me of Chinese style military naming conventions, which makes sense since for all the anti-China bluster, Trump seems to be a big admirer of the power Xi has.
They're hard at work nuking the dollar too so maybe that doesn't matter anymore then
As much as I love any opportunity to stick it to Trump, wasting billions of dollars is about the only thing the US Navy does anymore; in this case he's keeping them on-brand and on-mission. It's kind of hilarious they announced this at the same time as the Constellation-class getting canceled, just to make sure there's no chance the Navy goes even a single day without an active boondoggle of a ship which will never sail.
> As much as I love any opportunity to stick it to Trump
You’re the first one in this thread mentioning him.
The non-battleship in question is literally named the Trump Class.
And has an image of him on the back of the ship on this rendering:
https://www.twz.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/USS-Defiant-T...
I mean, define "wasted"? Presumably money will flow to American companies, American employees, American steel industry and so on.
In other words, yes it is billions pushed back into the economy, and yes, there will likely be very little "permanent" to show for it (and presumably the navy won't be much better for it) but it's not like they're just burying the cash.
It's important to understand that for the military industrial complex the goal is to "feed the machine", not actually to produce anything. In that sense this money is not wasted, it's doing exactly what it is supposed to do.
But think of the aesthetics!
That super sized destroyer has non of the battleship aesthetics though.
Indeed. WW1 and WW2 battleships are incredible pieces of engineering and (IMHO) rather beautiful in their own way. And some of them were built in very short time frames when you consider they had no computers to design them with.
It’s lucky the were pretty. They were outdated before the First World War.
Based on what evidence?
The battleship was clearly vulnerable to airpower in WWII. Much less so in WW1.
Based on them being involved in one battle in WW1 and being massively vulnerable to air attack in WW2.
It’s an exaggeration saying that they were outdated in WW1, as they basically acted as a deterrent, but it was at enormous expense and they don’t do much. Too big, too slow, too expensive. The argument was playing out even prior to WW1.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battleship
Aircraft carriers took over, as you say.
That 1 battleship vs battleship action (Jutland) was hugely influential on the course of the war.
Also there were several battlecruiser/cruiser vs battlecruiser/cruiser actions.
Faster and cheaper battleships was what they all wanted, and heavy cruisers seem to fill that role.
Jutland was influential, but mainly just resulted in big ships doing nothing.
That is sort of the role nuclear weapons have too I guess?
>Faster and cheaper battleships was what they all wanted
That would be a battlecruiser, and they don't seem to have been regarded as a success.
Big “beautiful” bill comes to mind.
Now the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill Act’.
Even the name is flawed.
It doesn’t matter if you assume that large scale conventional conflict between the us navy and the plan over Taiwan is impossible in a world with strategic nuclear weapons, otherwise it very much does matter, because navies are built on the timescale of decades and the plans you make today very much determine the future you will live in 10/20 years from now.
Yes, the opportunity cost is the real problem with all of this. A navy takes approximately forever to build.
If we are extremely lucky the outcome of this will be increased shipyard capacity and refined shipbuilding practices just in time to switch back to building a multitude of actually-useful ships.
But most likely is that this ends up delaying the U.S.'s ability to build back its navy in time to matter, which is a tremendous issue given how we do our commerce and where some of our deepest friends are physically located.
If the navy diverts funds from the ddgx program for this, the usn goes from struggling to keep up with the plan’s expansion to being at risk of being completely outmatched in the late 2030’s / 40’s.
It's over...
https://www.war.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/436695...
> The new Trump-class battleships will replace the Navy's previous plans to develop a new class of destroyer, the DDG(X). However, the sea service intends to incorporate the capabilities it had planned to employ on that platform into the new Trump-class ships.
I think there needs to be more awareness on how dire the navies situation is. Most Americans assume the 100s of Billions per year to the USN keeps us at some unparalleled level, but that doesn't seem likely to hold true.
The usn has consistently failed to procure any new surface ships other than upgrades to existing designs at scale this century.
In the early 2000’s, that didn't matter so much, but the loss of institutional knowledge, capability and manufacturing capacity is now at the point that it seems unlikely to be fixed without a significant amount of public interest and a huge amount of investment, neither of which seem likely without some crisis, at which point it will likely be too late.
Well before any "battleships" are built, we'd need to build up the infrastructure to actually produce them. This would presumably still be useful when the battleships get cancelled and we move onto a real program.
That going to be next to the finished wall or next to the Foxconn megaplant?
My assumption is that this will end up replacing the DDG(X) program in name only and that all the Trump "upgrades" will be scaled back or removed.
There are, realistically, two basic conflicts that we could get into, one where we have naval and air supremacy and one where we don't. In the world where we have basically no real threat to our naval assets then go big and don't worry about the armor. In fact, just take a bunch of super tankers and throw on as many VLS modules on them as you can. Done. This ship isn't that, as the article points out. In the other war, one where we don't own the sea, then the idea of armor is basically silly and your best defenses are numbers and size. The littoral has grown far beyond line of sight and is arguably the entire world at this point given satellites and the reach of modern weapons. In that world you want a lot, so you can loose them, and you want them small, so that a loss isn't a big deal. This ship isn't that either. It reminds me of the Homer[1]. If your entire goal is to show up in port looking good then maybe, but I doubt this ship is good at that either. The first step to looking good in port is is just showing up so smaller ships doing more port visits probably gets that job done far better. But I am a fan of an inefficient military. It is hard to fight if you have terrible weapons so go ahead! Build a terrible ship and spend a lot of money doing it!
[1]: https://simpsons.fandom.com/wiki/The_Homer
There’s two armies: one for fighting and one for parades.
Like many big tough men in power (and the broken culture and society that put them there), the parade army better serves their goals.
> It reminds me of the Homer[1]
This was literally my first reaction when reading the description/seeing the picture
"The missile is too round at the top, it needs to be pointy. Round missiles are not scary"
- The Dictator
>On the whole, it’s pretty clearly a grab-bag of stuff that sounded cool, thrown together without any real attempt to explain how is this better spending an equivalent amount of money on Burkes or on the DDG(X) program, which was going to come in around 15,000 tons, and which this is allegedly supposed to replace.
Yeah it's an ego project for someone with a fragile ego.
From the 1600s to immediately after WW2, Battleship meant roughly the same thing, not "fast armored ship with big guns", but literally "Ship fit to stand in the line of battle". So yeah it's not a WW2 fast heavily armed and armored Iowa class, but those are obsolete, so we should be happy.
If the guided missile cruiser is now the biggest meanest surface unit, I'm fine with calling it a battleship.
Also, if gun caliber and armor plate thickness and speed, etc are less than the Iowa class battleship, the above still stands. It just means that the state of the art in what the biggest baddest ship is has moved on.
The aircraft carrier in many ways already became the new battleship in 1942, and existing battleships became effectively second rate in the sense that a fleet aircraft carrier smokes a battleship, it still does.
Another way to think about it is that guided missile cruisers are kind of another evolution of the aircraft carrier, they launch large numbers of missiles at much less cost.
Of course, the reality is much more complicated. It's unclear how useful guided missile classes and nuclear powered aircraft carriers will be in a standup full blown major power fight, aircraft carriers have sure been nice for asymmetric warfare in relative peacetime.
So the trump admin is going something like a battleship. I would be surprised if they would be capable of doing that.
From what I have read and heard, they are much better at destroying existing functional structures than building functional things.
Time and energy and willpower are very limited resources.
Unintentionally, but to incredible effect, the current American regime has exploited the deeply rooted need by rational people to counter nonsense with sense, as a means to whittle down these limited resources.
We’re defending against waves of shitty idiot drones with multimillion dollar missiles like this blog post. But I’m not sure what other option there is.
This is reminiscent of the Homer: https://simpsons.fandom.com/wiki/The_Homer
“The Homer” is best compared to the M2 Bradley, whose development process was described in the book (and later movie) “The Pentagon Wars”. Unfortunately, all large combat systems (most notably ships) tend to come with a grab bag of ‘features’ of varying utility.
Bradleys are actually very useful and likely best in their class as an infantry fighting vehicle.
The M2 Bradley is an amazing vehicle, which does not accomplish the goals which its development program started with (basically a low-cost and reliable armored personnel carrier). This is why the M113 is still in service.
> whose development process was described in the book (and later movie) “The Pentagon Wars”
both of these are NOT documentaries, they wildly misrepresent reality and are basically fiction
The Bradley has performed very well in Ukraine, and the man who wrote that book is both a liar and crazy.
Read up on what his proposed alternative was.
>Read up on what his proposed alternative was.
Perhaps you could give a summary?
They may be referring to the campaign Burton waged against the Bradley's testing program.
Basically he wanted the Army to do a bunch of tests we already knew the outcome of: that the munitions in question would defeat the armor. This wasn't some sort of scandal or surprise to the pentagon. No armored vehicle is invincible, and the Bradley is already as heavily armored as is practical to cross bridges without them collapsing, etc.
Burton made a ton of enemies treating this like some sort of huge scandal he was uncovering, but in reality he was distorting the situation, then used it to popularize his book.
Basically he's just a grifter, but because he was saying contrarian things a bunch of people who had no idea what was actually happening bought into his bullshit.
It's similar to what happened with the "Fighter Mafia" where the public latched onto it without understanding how utterly bullshit the contrarian proposal actually was.
Thanks for the summary.
The spec on this piece of propaganda is the main battery is all missile systems. And the secondary is 5" guns, lasers, and a railgun.
The Navy stopped trying to install railguns back in 2021 but never stopped development.
I assume the lasers are future tech that sound cool, except this thing will be cancelled right after the next admin renames Dept of War back to DoD.
> right after the next admin renames Dept of War back to DoD
It's never actually been renamed. They just changed the stationery and website: https://www.usa.gov/agencies/u-s-department-of-defense.
Just like how Trump called in workers to put his name on the Kennedy Center building. Changing the name requires an act of Congress: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/20/76i
Wat?! But I've already cut off the tags on my new Dept of War swag and apparel!
At least I have the new updated globe with the renamed Gulf of America. They promised to send overlay stickers once Greenland and Canada become US states.
Which is why I am ticked off every time someone at NPR calls it the Department of War.
I refuse to use this name. The historic Department is literally the US Army. The DoD is one echelon higher. It's simply retarded.
Lasers might be really useful if a ship is being attacked by a swarm of drones. (The part about hitting those drones may be future, though...)
What's special about a drone that a laser would be better for than existing close-in weapon systems?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Close-in_weapon_system
The problem with drones is that there can be a lot of them, and they can be maneuvering. They can overwhelm conventional defenses. Lasers let you at least not run out of ammunition.
But how does a laser improve on that? They're slow and have to stay on a target for a while to damage it. Close-in defenses fire thousands of rounds per second and every single one of those rounds can take a drone out instantly if it hits.
The same blog has an excellent series on lasers as a naval weapon:
part 1: https://www.navalgazing.net/Lasers-at-Sea-Part-1
NB/ Lasers do not cope well with smoke, fog or rain.
[dead]
Ignoring all the practical considerations, the one thing I am positively in favour of is naming warships things which we can all believe in, so USS Defiance is great. I've always enjoyed the US submarines San Francisco and even District of Columbia, and the Chinese ships Liaoning and Nanchang, as an example. But my favourite names have to be the British names Formidable, Invincible, and Audacious. Now that I can get behind.
I mean, they literally named an entire class of ships when they launched HMS Dreadnought - and also caused previous classes of ships to be renamed to "pre-dreadnought".
But they've always had a flair for ship naming - Erebus and Terror, famous for Franklin's 3rd Expedition were originally bomb ships (that is, armed with mortars instead of cannon) of the Hecla class and Vesuvius class respectively, so firstly, naming mortar armed vessel classes after volcanoes, pretty cool.
But then check out the names of Erebus' sister ships...
* Hecla
* Fury
* Meteor
* Infernal
* Aetna
* Sulphur
* Vesuvius
* Devastation
* Volcano
* Beelzebub
You'd feel pretty badass serving on the HMS Devastation.
Fun fact - HMS Erebus took part in the Battle of Baltimore, so helped inspire that line from the US national anthem about "the bombs bursting in air"
It's going to be the "cybertruck of the seas" is what it's going to be if it's not quietly shelved when he gets distracted by some other thing that offends him.
If you’re looking for a “cybertruck of the seas”, I think the Zumwalt class is a prime candidate: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zumwalt-class_destroyer
It had some potential, but that potential has been squandered, at great cost.
The stats are crazy:
Similar "stats" to the Seawolf class.
Planned: 29 Completed: 3 Canceled: 26 Active: 3
Yet, unlike the Zumwalts, they are considered a good boat.
The Seawolf was kinda the first attempt at a next generation attack sub while we were still figuring out the technology, making it far too expensive. But it led to the Virginia class, which has gone into mainstream production.
In some ways there's a similar situation with the F-22 vs F-35, though those two may have a bit more of a difference on roles and requirements.
Are ships even defendable in the age of hypersonic missiles? It seems like, should a large-scale war happen again, it will look entirely different from the wars in the 20th century.
Ships are the only way to transport and deploy certain weapons across theaters; as such, there is no simple way to replace them. Your argument could be made in the era of Soviet anti-ship cruise missiles (and that argument was made), yet navies have continued to develop and deploy warships.
Yes, but in an age of guided missiles, surely better to have 3x10k ton warship than 1x30k ton warship.
That is unfortunately a complicated trade off, involving initial construction costs, total capability, maintainability, and crewing costs. Simply put, two amphibious assault ships do not equal or supersede one super-carrier.
>Are ships even defendable in the age of hypersonic missiles?
Well China has been building aircraft carrier mockups on train rails in the desert to test something on them while they're in motion...so I'd say unclear
Source?
You can Google it easily. Showed up on satellite photos
Dang even Hacker News is now rife with people making claims without providing contextual evidence.
Back in my day, the onus was on the person making the claim to provide evidence. Anything else is just lazy.
It’s social media not an academic paper.
Demanding people include evidence for stuff that is literally a simple google away is absurd. „China aircraft carrier Desert“.
> Anything else is just lazy.
As is expecting to be spoonfed trivial stuff
> Are ships even defendable in the age of hypersonic missiles?
Given 90s-era NATO air defences are shooting down Russia’s newest hypersonic missiles [1], I’m continuing to treat the category as more hype than utility.
[1] https://www.globaldefensecorp.com/2024/11/20/ukraines-patrio...
China's hypersonics may work better than Russia's.
May. Or maybe the whole thing is just hype.
That presumes no future innovation or improvement in defense systems.
Which with the way the US is being managed might be true, but generally there's no evidence that China has a missile which cannot be intercepted by refined means we already know.
> China's hypersonics may work better than Russia's
They probably do. But absent positive profiling, it doesn’t make sense to design against a hypothetical super weapon.
You are quite confused.
Anticipating the future and developing counters/mitigations is at the very core of what pentagon planners do.
> Anticipating the future and developing counters/mitigations is at the very core of what pentagon planners do.
Is this when they aren’t making pretty boats with pictures on the back?
Signs of excellent decision making are limited at this time.
A ship close enough to hit anything has always been close enough to be hit. Hypersonics are not revolutionary, countermeasures will evolve to address them the same way they have for every preceding weapon system. But ultimately, fleets need to be able to take a hit as they always have.
Pretty much.
25% interception rate on shit tier Kinzhals last year, which allegedly required salvoing all 32 interceptors from patriot battery, a patriot pac3 mse, aka the most advanced operational variant from 10 years ago. It's dropped to 6% now after RU improvement.
Math basically saying ~10 kinzhals can overwhelm typical carrier group with couple flight3 Burkes assuming all Burke VLS was dedicated to ABM, which it's not. Extrapolate to a more performant PRC hypersonic, and interception rate might approach 0. There's nothing in US missile defense tests (staged ballistic trajectories / simple decoys) that remotely suggest they have capable interceptors or the magazine depth to survive even moderate amount of high end hypersonics. Which is going to proliferate, see PRC building $100k commodity hypersonics for potential floor. Bundle that with space ISR and expeditionary navy model is even more dead in 10-15 years.
Hence IMO it's rational USnavy modernization/recapitalization is such a shit show. US legislatively locked in 11 carrier navy with all the supporting surface fleet that entails. Shit needs to be built, by law, but there's nothing competent to build in face of AShM math, so keep grafting and fucking around. It's not like USN acquisitions wasn't shit fucked before Trump.
All of US MIC acquisition behavior makes sense if one accepts that navy is probably fucked (including subsurface), the only thing US really needs for hegemony (excluding PRC containment, which US functionally can't), is 100-200 B21s (naval tacair/rip f/a-xx likely also fucked) to bomb whatever mid sized countries they want with impunity without putting surface fleet at risk (imagine Houthis with hypersonics). Any legacy naval hulls, tacair frames with some modernization will still black magic overmatch vs everyone except PRC for peacetime dick measuring. TLDR USN can't do anything against PRC, but doesn't have to do anything VS everyone else. So USN does whatever it wants, which includes a lot of flailing because it doesn't really know what to do at all.
I don't think that taking interception rate as the only metric is fair. RU missiles have shown pretty low precision - and hitting a moving ship is much harder than hitting a stationary building, at least in my imagination.
Yes, hence RU missile shit tier, they can hit point targets at least, which is step above IR missile that is dog shit tier, area spam. Maybe IR high end stuff RU tier if we can disambiguate the recent UAE hit that is statistically suggest low CEP point target capability.
For PRC missiles, see tandem missile demonstration a few years ago, two missiles launched from different launch sites coordinated to hit moving ship at sea. AKA PRC already have the ISR / kill chain to hit moving ships synced to time and space. Something basically no one else has demonstrated. Now extrapolate that out 10 years, while they (and US) are proliferating spaced based C4ISR = basically any surface fleet anywhere is dead, and even if we downgrade to only static targets, that means all US logistics, i.e. unrep are dead which leaves surface fleet single deployment assets. DDG barely has enough endurance for a few days of high tempo operations (fuel and weapons), carriers has endurance but without replenishment, no ammo, and without DDG escorts no protection.
As I understand it, hypersonics only got the focus they did in russia and china because US missile defence had evolved to the point where it was too much of a threat to existing ballistic missiles. No fundamental reason to think hypersonics won't in turn suffer the same fate.
They transitioned to hypersonic development after US withdrew from ABM treaty in early 2000s, historically moving to hypersonic was not reaction to US having a working shield (it didn't), it was more proactive move demonstrate US pursuing missile shield is likely not ever going to be viable. It took another 15+ years for US ABM tests to consistently intercept ballistics, and even then under very favourable (scripted), not operational conditions, i.e. FTM44 in 2020 was first time US intercepted an "ICBM representative" target. Current US ABM defense #s is not remotely credible threat vs salvo medium/high end ballistics, i.e. current US has ~50 GMDs, it functionally doesn't matter for strategic level exchanges.
For theatre/tactical performance, again early Kinzhal was functionally ballistic and interception rate was ~25%, dropped to 6% when RU added some terminal maneuvering. So US has not only not caught up to ABM defense outside of North Korea tier threats, ABM defense currently on trend to lose the physics race (against capable adversaries). There are fundamental physical reason high end hypersonics will likely only extend the interception gap. The TLDR is terminal speed past mach 6+, the intercept window compresses so much it becomes almost mechanically impossible for interceptors, i.e. g-load on interceptors will physically break them apart. Kinzhal (which US/PRC categorize as ballistic tier) terminal is ~mach4, PRC DFs (US categorize as proper hypersonic) are estimated to sustain mach 5-10, i.e. high machs until final seconds, basically physically impossible engagement envelopes. DEW doesn't have dwell time vs hypersonic already shielded against plasma sheath. Current golden shield bet is on glide phase interceptors, which doesn't really answer magazine math, i.e. multiple expensive interceptors (especially midcourse) is going to lose the attrition game regardless, maybe not vs smaller adversaries, but vs PRC. Extra lopsided in context of naval defense with limited magazine depth where it's not even about $$$ but inability to defend against saturation.
> TLDR USN can't do anything against PRC, but doesn't have to do anything VS everyone else.
Eh the USN can still maintain superiority outside of the South China Sea which means control of global trade. It’s not like it’s useless or anything even if the Taiwan straight turns into a dead zone or if the USN has to worry about missiles from the Chinese mainland. China also has to worry about missiles hitting their mainland industrial centers and naval facilities too.
Look at DoDs China report last few years, specifically PRC fielded conventional strike. PRC DF26, H6xCJ20s already can hit every essential SLOC from Malacca to MENA at volume, DF27 reaches west coast and Europe. There isn't really anywhere except Atlantic (and south America) where USN can operate permissively, i.e. every shipping lane PRC needs (for energy in next 10 years) is already covered. As for missiles hitting mainland, we're really talking about attritional game, PRC A2D2 works as advertised and they can potentially blunt much of the fires from being deliverable to mainland, and there's also sheer scale asymmetry, i.e. PRC pouring more concrete in 10 years than US in past 100. That's just a stupendous amount of infra to break. Meanwhile DF27 can hit west coast, in a few years they'll have DF27+ that reach most of CONUS. The real question then is who can deliver more fires, can win attrition game, can reconstitute faster. And vs PRC, it may not be US considering they put so much fires generation on carriers that may not be able to deliver any munitions under PRC A2D2 and the 30-40 B21 replacement (we're talking 10 years out) barely replaces one carrier in fire power. Meanwhile PRC has global strike eggs is mostly in mainland based ICBMs that skips entire delivery vehicle middle man and can potentially hit CONUS and everything in between with high survivability. And ample surplus industry/construction sector to rebuild. The TLDR is once hemispheric hypersonic proliferates more, USN can't operate permissively in any of the theatres PRC really cares about.
But again that doesn't mean USN can't operate permissively vs literally anyone else, even on legacy platforms that still grossly overmatches every other adversary regardless of acquisition malpractice.
> Meanwhile DF27 can hit west coast, in a few years they'll have DF27+ that reach most of CONUS.
> Meanwhile PRC has global strike eggs is mostly in mainland based ICBMs that skips entire delivery vehicle middle man and can potentially hit CONUS and everything in between with high survivability.
You are just describing nuclear war here, which seems unrealistic to me. China knows they’ll lose ocean access and trade will be stoped, which means no oil, hence why they’ve gone all-in in EVs and “green” technology. Piping in oil from Russia or whatever is a fantasy - pipelines will just get blown up.
Chinese missiles flying all over the world to sink blue water naval ships also seems unrealistic to me. They have to find the ships, for starters. This is a feat much more sensible in and around the Taiwan Straight or the South China Sea. But in your excitement you are forgetting that while certainly China can rain down missiles on enemy forces in the region, those same enemies can strike back too. Or are these hypersonic missiles so scary and advanced and all allied forces will just have to sit quietly while their military and industrial equipment is bombed? If that’s the case, what’s China waiting for?
> Look at DoDs China report last few years, specifically PRC fielded conventional strike.
Could you link to a specific paper or report that you are referring to? I read these from time to time.
>nuclear war here, which seems unrealistic to me
You described nuclear war first with mainland conventional strikes. Regardless, 2025 DoD china report lists fielded conventional strikes with west coast on the map for a reason, they are formally acknowledging CONUS conventional vulnerability. There's popular discourse that CONUS ICBM strikes = nuke back, but that's like saying mainland cruise missile strikes = nuke back. Afterall US cruise missiles are nuclear capable (i.e. what Trump explicitly wants for Trump / Defiant class) and US cruise missiles designed for terrain hugging to minimize detection time, no different than low ICBM response time. Reality is, once conventional CONUS vulnerability exists, the hit me and get nuked bluster no longer holds. US planners now has to account for CONUS strikes... hence why golden dome is a thing, nice piece of security theatre for masses when PRC ability to hit CONUS becomes unavoidable. Like folks can dismiss it as Trumps ego project, but it coincides with US military officials informally acknowledging CONUS vulnerability in media last few years, now made formal with new PRC fielded conventional strike map.
>knows they’ll lose ocean access
Do they, or do they know they can dismantle USN ability to SLOC blockade, especially energy routes. Mind you US can still use CENTCOM forces and political leverage to prevent MENA producers from selling, but this subject is about navy and current PRC rocketry A2D2 is likely in position to prevent US from SLOC blockade.
>pipelines will just get blown up
Yes, incidentally the 2025 Chinese conventional strike map covers Albertan oil infra to US... reminder US still imports 30% oil due to refinery mismatch.
> all over the world... find the ships, for starters
See PRC launching 100s of ISR sats last few years, SCS has persistent coverage already, but now rest of world has decent coverage by this point too. Either way context is 5-10 year mega constellation roll out by which time there very resilient and redundant will be global ISR / kill chain. Their space infra has already moved beyond backyard in last few years.
>same enemies can strike back
Sure but in what volume? Enough to win attrition game? It's not just hypersonics, see PRC acquiring 1m+ loitering munitions, separate order from 1m+ drones, likely shaheed tier with 1IC coverage. Hypersonics for high end assets, there's stupendous low/mid end mop up fires asymmetry to dismantle industrial base within 1-2IC. PRC has the munition depth to win the attrition game. The side with most fires bandwidth can feasibly dismantle adversary ability to fire back. All this from mainland platforms significantly more survivable because PRC doctrine assumes being hit and designed to keep hitting back. At some point the theatre aimpoint math becomes self evident, PRC by virtue of simply being a massive country with ample hardened targets is in position to survive being hit while their adversaries are not. PRC adversaries has less fires to deal with more targets, PRC vice versa, i.e. PRC can be wounded, adversaries will be overkilled. This one of the most glaring asymmetries, i.e. US planners cannot get JP to disperse or harden.
> waiting for
PRC isn't trigger happy, either way every year that passes PRC position in theatre gets stronger, but most importantly autarky and global strike capacity also increases. i.e. in about 10 years, coal to olefin (petchem) and EV penetration trend lines will make PRC close to oil independent, - their energy autarky will exceed US domestic oil who won't fix refinery mixmatch in same time period. Which circles back to CAN/US pipeline vulnerability. Energy autarky mismatch probably most important consideration, even if PRC can break USN SLOC blockade, as I mentioned, US has other tools to disrupt MENA energy flows. Other capabilities like mega constellation ISR increasing prompt global strike coordination, surging SSN and XXLUUV output, lots of reasons to wait and build up. Ideally build up so asymmetry so obvious US compelled to leave East Asian on her own. That's the ultimate prize, not just TW>
>report
https://media.defense.gov/2025/Dec/23/2003849070/-1/-1/1/ANN...
see page 85 for fielded conventional strike. You can compare past report map, the new one doesn't even bother labelling 1/2iC anymore because those defense lines are functionally dead vis a vis PRC procurements last few years.
> You described…
I don’t think so, because if China invades Taiwan or takes similar enough action, and the United States and Japan come to the defense of Taiwan, an attack on the continental United States would not just be disproportionally stupid, but it would be an escalatory mistake as well, because you’ve now just declared actual war on the United States versus your more ‘limited’ war with the aim of only taking Taiwan. You see the difference, right?
But for China to attack Taiwan and the US and Japan to strike Chinese forces, it sort of requires China to then strike US and allied forces throughout the entire region. Attacking Kadena or even striking mainland Japanese industrial facilities, shipyards, &c. And then facing retaliatory strikes on Chinese industrial-military targets seems about to be fair game, and of course China doesn’t view the loss or usage of human capital in the same way that western countries do. I don’t think such a scenario here immediately results in nuclear war, even if the mainland is struck unless the US or Japan start targeting first/second strike capabilities or cause mass civilian casualties. The reason being, well, China would have struck US and Japanese bases first. And frankly if they don’t do that in the opening salvo of the war they’re stupid anyway.
> Do they, or do they know they can dismantle USN ability to SLOC blockade, especially energy routes.
They can’t. This is nonsense.
> Yes, incidentally the 2025 Chinese conventional strike map covers Albertan oil infra to US... reminder US still imports 30% oil due to refinery mismatch.
Sure, in the unlikely scenario that China also attacks Canada (might as well attack everyone at this point), yes US imports go down causing consumer harm, but China’s oil imports drop to 0. When you think about attrition you have to consider attrition for both sides, not just one. China has gone all-in on “green” tech precisely because they cannot win in a war in which they are dependent on oil - see US actions in Venezuela and the Middle East.
> See PRC launching 100s of ISR sats last few years, SCS has persistent coverage already, but now rest of world has decent coverage by this point too. Either way context is 5-10 year mega constellation roll out by which time there very resilient and redundant will be global ISR / kill chain. Their space infra has already moved beyond backyard in last few years.
Ok and the US does that too over the next 5-10 years (assuming capabilities don’t exist today, though they likely do). Now what? China hasn’t really gained an advantage here, launching missiles all over the world could be misconstrued as a nuclear attack and requiring a nuclear response. Is China going to launch missiles at Bahrain, UAE, Korea, the EU, and everyone else? Doesn’t seem realistic.
> PRC isn't trigger happy, either way every year that passes PRC position in theatre gets stronger, but most importantly autarky and global strike capacity also increases. i.e. in about 10 years, coal to olefin (petchem) and EV penetration trend lines will make PRC close to oil independent, - their energy autarky will exceed US domestic oil who won't fix refinery mixmatch in same time period. Which circles back to CAN/US pipeline vulnerability. Energy autarky mismatch probably most important consideration, even if PRC can break USN SLOC blockade, as I mentioned, US has other tools to disrupt MENA energy flows. Other capabilities like mega constellation ISR increasing prompt global strike coordination, surging SSN and XXLUUV output, lots of reasons to wait and build up. Ideally build up so asymmetry so obvious US compelled to leave East Asian on her own. That's the ultimate prize, not just TW
You’re right about two things: China will get stronger and more capable, and it will be less reliant as a country on oil, but you still can’t fly jet fighters with EV batteries and the wealthy markets (EU, US) are turning away from EVs as domestic policy and spending money securing rare earth refining capabilities. All the time you give to China also has to be given to other countries to react and plan too - which I think is often overlooked because western news rants about western failures all day but can’t speak mandarin and don’t have a clue about China’s issues as well.
But I think what you’re wrong about here is the threat, precisely because you are providing a contradiction. There are two geopolitical things that matter here. One is Taiwan as part of the first island chain - I.e. good for US monitoring of Chinese naval activity, and second, the semiconductors.
The longer China waits, the less important Taiwan is to the US. It can build other facilities, semiconductor manufacturing can be invested away from Taiwan too. And as you are asserting, I think, allows the Chinese navy to go and operate in the Pacific with impunity. Frankly I don’t know why they care if the US knows where their ships are anyway. What’s the point of the forces when we don’t have any interest in war in the first place? Does China want to spend this money and then launch missiles at Houthi rebels? Be my guest.
But what exactly does that matter in the world you’ve described? For all of these things to happen on a longer timeframe, the US doesn’t have to “leave” Asia. What is China going to do if the US keeps a base in Japan or the Philippines? Bomb it? Ah ok, well now the US has also built hypersonic missiles and all of these capabilities (because we already have them today anyway) and now if they attack US forces the US gets to do the scary boogeyman thing that you’re asserting China can do and blow up all of their ships with indefensible missiles strikes because they know where all the ships are “because satellites”.
I just do not find “China attacks everything the US has ever built and successfully destroys it and there is nothing the US can do” very convincing.
Thanks for sharing the paper by the way. I’ll take a look. I have a book to finish and at 100 pages it’ll take me a little bit of time to peruse :)
>disproportionally stupid
Why assume PRC attacks US+co first? This 2015s talking point based on limited PLA modernization, use it or lose it force structure, so they would be smart to use first, then. 2025+ reality is PRC has survivable fires complex to dismantle 1/2IC anytime. They're in position to bait US+co into firing first if they want. BTW US coming to assist TW is already declaring full scale war over Chinese sovereignty / territory, there's no difference if US wants to limit (i.e. prevent landings) because TW scenario is full war scenario where PRC gets vote in escalation, western analytic conflation over limited/regional war is (mis)attribution to PRC previously not able to prosecute a broader war, but PRC will always prosecute the largest possible war relative to capability over TW, and now that includes CONUS. Sure PRC GAZAing JP/SKR, obviously JP/SKR will want to counter strike mainland, but that opens CONUS to attack and frankly that's a US alliance management problem, because ultimately broader war is net good for PRC strategic stretch goals - to kick US out east asia, that can really only be done by physically dismantling US basing in region, bonus if it deindustrialized JP/SKR who are peacetime competitors vs PRC, who again, is structured to retain more industrial base and reconstitute faster.
>This is nonsense
This is 2025, I mention 2025 DoD report for a reason. Look at the rocketry coverage - encompasses all SLOCs from PRC cost to MENA + 1500km, i.e. standoff carrier range. It's time to stop coping. USN surface fleet is on paper not survivable anymore, pentagon paper. Again once people accept reality of hemispheric hypersonic A2D2, everything about incompetent USN procurement makes sense. This has been obvious for years btw, those missiles exist pre 2025, the latest report just decided to acknowledge reality.
>hasn’t really gained an advantage here
Advantage is massive. First it closes disadvantage, US already has global strike expeditionary model. PRC equalizing = US losing advantage. PRC having more survivable and high-end fires = PRC can hit anywhere on earth globally within hour using purely mainland platforms not vulnerable to disruption, unlike US carriers/bombers with long logistics tail. This advantage potentially step down from rods from god. BTW US can have this too in SSGN with CPS, but we talking about a few 100 VLS tubes that needs days/weeks of prepositioning vs 10000s from PRC mainland.
>going to launch missiles
You know how US gets to simply bomb non nuclear countries with impunity. The answer is PRC gets that privilege too, if war vs US escalates, all global US military assets are on the table. Countries are going to weigh if US protection worth the risk and when they see US simply can't protect they have choices to make, yes this means US nuke umbrella gets will get tested.
> oil imports drop to 0. > China’s issues as well > other countries to react and plan too
What's PRC energy production composition? They make 4m+ million barrels, enough to cover all industrial use, i.e. they can run current industrial output on purely domestic oil alone. USN uses like 100k oil per day, PRC domestic production can sustain 40 USNs in perpetuity, they don't need to electrify 6gen. Most oil is used for transportation, of which really diesel is critical (freight). That's where their 1-2 million barrel of CTO equivalents, i.e. they can displace industrial oil with coal to maintain trucking fleet and ration consumer transport oil. How much transport disruption is function of EV penetration, right now a lot in 10 years, minimal. Reminder PRC is actually a continental size power with huge energy assets, not as much as US relative to population, but enough to prosecute forever war with PRC industrial base, i.e. the one that already outproduces everyone combined (as materially not value add). PRC is not Japan, PRC has functionally infinite resources and current mismatch is something that can and is being engineered around. PRC is also not west, because they have industrial base to build a lot of hammers, and eventually hammers get used. PRC is obviously not VZ/MENA who can't hit US back, while PRC can. IMO face PRC realities before fixating on PRC issues. As for other countries reaction/plan, it's factored in, reality is we know what level of infra expansion or acquisition west is capable of, we know PRC china speed trendlines, hence limit extrapolation to reasonable 10 year timeframe.
> two geopolitical things that matter here > don’t have any interest in war in the first place
US+co seems to have interest in intervening in Chinese civil war, which itself exists due to US support over last 70 years. There's a world where US facilitates peaceful reunification on PRC terms and maybe PRC can live with relatively benign US hanging around in east Asia. But if transition not peaceful, then there is every reason to simply kick US out of east Asia. This key distinction, TW is political goal, kicking US out of east asia is geopolitical / regional hegemony goal. That's the overarching geopolitics that matters. Spheres of influence and all that.
> China attacks everything the US has ever built and successfully destroys it and there is nothing the US can do” very convincing.
It's very convincing because the flip side is US can likely destroy PLAN as well. When I say surface fleet is dead, I include PRC / everyone. The problem is USN likes to launch missiles at Houthis, US global security posture is predicated on survivable expeditionary navy. PRC is not. After both sides lose their boats, US loses most strategic posture, while PRC can rebuild faster. The point is US posture is uniquely vulnerable, because of course it is, PRC spend last 30 years specifically dismantling US force structure. US force structure have been distracted by GWOT, procurement drama... and just geopolitical reality of PRC industrial base, has having difficulty doing the opposite.
> Why assume PRC attacks US+co first? …
Because the US has no interest in a war with China?
Actually attacking the US is literally the worst possible idea for China though. They can win a short, high-intensity war over Taiwan and leverage US political chaos and dysfunction to achieve their goals, but attacking the actual United States would quickly, and cohesively force the United States to get its shit together.
I don’t have any illusions about American Exceptionalism, but China’s strengths in manpower and manufacturing capacity don’t have the leverage that you think they do when a land-oriented power (China) has to engage in warfare with a naval and air-based power. China middling oil production would be destroyed by US missiles and it would be unable to import more oil. That’s a big problem that a land-based power isn’t going to be able to easily overcome. But I guess as you say “China has missiles, China blow up all US forces everywhere” or something like that.
And even winning a war doesn’t “kick” the US out of East Asia. They can just maintain existing bases and naval forces. What’s China going to do about it? Are you going to bomb Japan and Korea? Launch missiles at Saudi Arabia since they aren’t selling you any more oil? The scenario you are fantasizing about which is effectively “China rains down missiles on everything and nobody can do anything about it” is really just not realistic and you keep assuming that other countries don’t have missiles or capabilities or the ability to cause significant harm to Chinese interests.
If you really believe that China launching an invasion of Taiwan (I don’t care if it’s an internal affair or not, China takes action against the US and we just sell Taiwan weapons and take actions against China and so forth) legitimizes striking the continental United States none of this technology you’re talking about matters because your argument is basically “everything escalates to nuclear war” so what does anyone care about how much the US or China wastes on military assets?
But China doesn’t have any intentions of seeing its civilization destroyed, nor does the US, so once you take nuclear war off the table, you have to manage escalation to avoid nuclear war, which is why China is building so many surface ships.
> When I say surface fleet is dead, I include PRC / everyone. The problem is USN likes to launch missiles at Houthis, US global security posture is predicated on survivable expeditionary navy. PRC is not. After both sides lose their boats, US loses most strategic posture, while PRC can rebuild faster. The point is US posture is uniquely vulnerable, because of course it is, PRC spend last 30 years specifically dismantling US force structure. US force structure have been distracted by GWOT, procurement drama... and just geopolitical reality of PRC industrial base, has having difficulty doing the opposite.
The PLAN doesn’t know how to fight a war. The GWOT and similar operations are done so the United States can continue to make sure everything works, logistics concerns are ironed out, and more. There are other reasons for these engagements, of course.
I don’t really accept your theory the Chinese military will just launch missiles and blow up all USN ships, which I think is a fundamental disagreement here and I am not convinced by your writing to change my mind.
> US+co seems to have interest in intervening in Chinese civil war, which itself exists due to US support over last 70 years.
China overplayed its hand with the seizure of Hong Kong, restricting rare earth exports from Chinese refineries, and so-called wolf warrior diplomacy. It had a very easy path to assimilate Taiwan without bloodshed but now it’s going to have to fight over it do no real good reason. The US and Americans in general don’t really care too much about Taiwan, and had China just continued to be a good partner and showed kindness toward Taiwan it would have won the long game and convinced Taiwan to rejoin peacefully. It’s really unfortunate. The US and China don’t need to fight, but I think Xi Jingpin specifically and China’s posture generall has caused the US to have to support Taiwan instead. There are a long list of grievances both sides can legitimately levy at each other, but I think China was the one to rekindle the issue while the US was thinking hey let’s all just trade and get along. I know you’ll disagree but I’ve reviewed enough of the history of both countries and the region to know that this is the case.
> in a war with China
What is fuss over US coming to TW defense then? US wants to prevent PRC reunification regardless of method, that's ample reason for war. If US doesn't want war, just have state department tell PRC TW is internal problem.
> get its shit together
How, it takes years to build up modern atrophied industrial base + workforce. It will take even longer to degrade PRC industrial base. Reminder US vs Iraq took 5 carrier groups, favourable regional basing and unsustainably high tempo permissive operations 6 weeks to dismantle Iraq... scale that to PRC size... charitably 500x more industrially capable than Iraq with greater tech base, it will take US+co decades, and US MIC was much better capitalized then, and US industry more productive (as in actual material production not value add). Meanwhile, US basing and posture vs PRC is significantly worse than Iraq, i.e. relative fire generation ability is even worse at standoff range, assuming it even exists. It is innumerate thinking US+co can substantially degrade PRC knowing basic numbers. Either way this is dependant on PRC mainland being hit, is US going to permit mainland attacks from 1IC? What if PRC creams JP, PH for using basing to undermine PRC efforts? Attacking via proxies isn't some magical lifehack that keeps CONUS safe, especially with US basing. This isn't UKR where US has deniability shipping shit from Poland. Hitting mainland from theatre with US basing opens proportional CONUS attack.
> land oriented
Who cares? It's not about land/sea/air oriented, it's about long range strikes oriented, just because PRC doesn't double down on supremely vulnerable legacy navy/airforce to project fires doesn't mean they cannot prosecute long range fires. Again this is 2025, that 8000km DF27 land attack to CONUS exist for a reason. Other missiles to hit tankers/unrep within stand off range etc all the logistics chain that USN and USAF depends to even operate in theatre. There's a reason why is DDGX and FAXX getting the ugly step child treatment, because none of them or their sustainment are survivable in their platform range. When US depend on middle platform to deliver fires, and those middle platforms cannot operate because their even more vulnerable sustainment goes boom, US muh boats and planes is at massive long range fires disadvantage over "land" based fires that simply skips middlemen. And PRC gets to do that precisely because they have industrial base to make disposable single shot long range fires economical.
Extrapolate to land attack US infra with modest DF27 upgrade, that's all of CONUS oil infra going boom too. Everything US can do to PRC, PRC can do to US in short term, if not already because DoD reports tend to be behind the times. Who do you think will fare better then? PRC with 4x more energy infra for US to strike and magnitude more distributed energy infra. So yes, of course the answer is more missiles because PRC prompt global strike explicitly to attack CONUS strategic targets conventionally was written in PLA future doctrine as far back as 2010s. They explicitly are circumventing vulnerable naval fires for global fires straight from mainland because they understand US Navy+airfoce expeditionary model is shit fucked, having spent 20 years building all the tools to dismantle it. Meanwhile, US institutionally locked into shit fucked model, because again, by law US cannot divest from it.
>bomb Japan and Korea
Yes? If US drawn into TW scenario, escalation logic incentivized to align with geopolitical logic, which is to displace US out of east Asia, which calls for bombing JP/SKR/PH or anyone that assists US materially. They are absolutely on the menu because the gains are huge. As for Saudi + others, just US bases if they contribute to undermining PRC interests. If oil ain't flowing to PRC because US pressure, then remove US pressure. Again note all of CENTCOM is in PRC missile range, that is by design.
>nobody can do anything about it
Did I say that? I said PRC will receive counter fire, but not at scale vs what PRC can dish out. Nobody can do _enough_ about it, that's patently realistic when you look at stockpiles and force balance. Go back to the Iraq example. Now realize PRC has magnitude more than US+co in firepower targeted at JP/SKR/PH etc than US+co has via Iraq.
>escalates to nuclear war
Because I don't think it will. I think it's frankly cope rhetoric US delulus themselves into thinking US can maintain presence in another upcoming hegemons backyard because nukes. That bluff is going to get called because alternative is ceding regional hegemony aspirations forever because US cray cray and will nuke if they can't preposition on other side of globe. BTW PRC went to war with USSR, US in KR, shadow fought France in IndoChina, threated UK over HK, border skirmish with India, aka almost every nuclear state, over strategic considers much less important than TW. US threatening nukes vs PRC over TW isn't credible, nuclear umbrella isn't going to save JP/SKR/PH if they assist US in TW.
>China is building so many surface ships
But they're not? They have 300x military shipyard capacity than US, with CSCC producing more tonnage than ALL US postwar shipbuilding, a period where US was rolling out full carriers every year. PRC not doing that, they are keeping an absolutely modest navy relative to their productive capability. PRC military ship building is <1% of total shipbuilding capacity, every other naval power was dedicating 20-50% during peacetime. PRC match low end of that they're launching 80 carriers a year with dry docks sized to fit. PRC naval acquisition is best described as cautiously sufficient for regional overmatch, i.e. be more powerful than US+co in PRC backyard where they need peacetime presence. There's a reason rocket force is the most prestigious / pillar and reported directly to CMC before recent reforms.
>GWOT
C'mon you think GWOT built any surface warfare competency, see Yemen, see 7th fleet crashing left and right. It's negative experience, history has show correct doctrine + training > legacy experience time and time again.
>don’t really accept your theory... change mind
Don't? I'm not here to change your mind. This is public for others to draw conclusions based on argument.
>rejoin peacefully
Let's not pretend US isn't funding NGOs and various political groups to spike peaceful reunion efforts before HK. Reality post US sponsored sunflower movement was it's obvious if PRC wanted TW back before 2049, or prior due to generational voting habits, they'd have to fight for it. It just so happens fighting may ultimately be the PRC quiet preferrable route since retaking TW peacefully doesn't displace US out of east Asia, only drawing US into TW conflict does. So yes, I disagree, I think US overplayed it's hand pretending it can intervene in TW, and legitimizes PRC reason for extended war, and will end my comments here since impasse.
The US won't hit the mainland because that would escalate the war into WW3. The rest of the world will likely just give Taiwan to China and move on.
If Putin had stopped at Crimea we'd all have lived with it too.
Well, it’s a big unknown. Let me lay out briefly why that’s the case at least in my mind.
Let’s say you are China and you’ve decided to use your military forces to take Taiwan. You know if you are just facing Taiwan alone you’ll suffer losses and ships will get blown up, but you are ok with that. Glory to the CCP and all. Sorry about those semiconductors planet Earth. Those facilities will be obliterated.
But… the United States and Japan (the two most important partners here in my view) are allies and they aren’t officially allied with Taiwan but are happy to sell weapons and, maybe, and you’re unsure about this, just maybe if China invades Taiwan they may say that this isn’t acceptable to our national security and we will take action to intervene, but let’s say there’s nothing in the cards to attack the Chinese mainland (frankly neither the US or Japan really have an interest in doing that).
So now you are thinking ok, if it’s just us versus Taiwan that’s a piece of cake. But if the US and Japanese militaries intervene and defend Taiwan, maybe your potential success rate drops considerably, maybe to 60% or lower. That’s a problem. What can you do about it?
Well you could… declare that war will take place just in the Taiwan Straight and surrounding area and everyone else’s country is “off limits”. Escalation means chaos. The CCP is all about stability, 100-year old plans within plans and all that.
But if the US and Japan enter the war, you could sink the entire US Navy but they’d have free rein to safely fly in missiles and planes and equipment to their permanent aircraft carrier: Japan.
How long do you think it takes for China to attack a US military installation on Japan? And at that point, what really is the escalation for the US or Japanese to, idk, conduct a limited military operation to attack a Chinese Air Force base in response?
The whole situation, at least in my mind, is so dangerous because the escalatory ladder is fast and steep. What happens if a Chinese missile misses the US base and kills Japanese citizens? How long would Japan put up with a blockade (because you (China) of course have to stop the flow of munitions coming to defend Taiwan), or harassing of Japanese trading ships? If the US had an airbase in Korea or Japan or the Philippines or Guam or Australia and the Chinese blew it up and killed hundreds of US airmen, how short is the escalatory ladder from that to the US and Allies returning the favor on any Chinese military installation?
Related to the definition of Battleship for the fellow pedantic: What is a tank
https://acoup.blog/2022/05/06/collections-when-is-a-tank-not...
Less humorously, the proposed Trump class "Battleship" is what a teenage armchair general would dream up. The kind of person who thinks Ministry of War sounds cool and cosplays as his favourite operator.
Meanwhile, China has found a simple and practical alternative.
https://www.twz.com/sea/chinese-cargo-ship-packed-full-of-mo...
Container ships + modular weapons are too crazy
Whatever this febrile dream vaporware could be, it's still way too big for modern combat. Don't take my word for it, listen to a US Navy Commander, a serious person obviously, explain how it's terrible and completely inattentive to real USN needs and doctrine. https://youtu.be/0Zqa9azGo6M
Moreover though, it's another facet of the show of the White House occupant embellishing their ego and playing the reality star part through random, aspirational concepts of a plan.
PS: I dislike almost all Republicans and most Democrats, especially all of the ones who take bribes from corporations and foreign governments, so this isn't a political message but a reality statement.
I dislike almost all Republicans and most Democrats, especially all of the ones who take bribes from corporations and foreign governments
As opposed to the corrupt King who loves to pardon corrupt politicians, no matter their stripe.
https://www.citizensforethics.org/reports-investigations/cre...
Couldn't he have just gone the F-47 and Kennedy Center route and just renamed an existing (/in development) thing?
Meanwhile in China, https://www.twz.com/sea/chinese-cargo-ship-packed-full-of-mo...
We should christen it as a new class of ships: the dreadyep. With any luck, the gold encrustations will sink it when it is set afloat. Barring that, maybe some midshipman will "forget" to seal off a bilge port.
A modern continuation of the Swedish Wasa class?
As a non-American living across the pond, the thing that is most terrifying to me about Trump's presidency isn't his authoritarian tendencies, corruption, cruelty, or criminality. The world has seen plenty of leaders like that. Maybe not recently in so-called Western countries, but it happens. What's novel is his sheer idiocy. Calling him a moron is an insult to the intelligence of morons. And what's so terrifying about it isn't that a man so stupid was elected president of such a big and important country, although that's bad enough, but seeing American titans of industry and other members of its elite - people possessing real power - seriously discussing, or even praising, the quality of the emperor's new clothes.
It's always like this with authoritarians. They become the arbiter of truth, and so they don't hear the actual truth very often. They become the giver of power, and so those who want power do whatever they have to in order to get the big man to give it to them.
So the only surprises are 1) how fast this happened, and 2) that "American titans of industry" are just power hungry rather than actually men of talent and brilliance.
> They become the arbiter of truth, and so they don't hear the actual truth very often
Yes, but they're rarely that stupid. The world sees a man say five times that he's lowered drug prices by 400-1500%. And that was just last week. For many Europeans it's remarkable to even come across a person that stupid.
> that "American titans of industry" are just power hungry rather than actually men of talent and brilliance.
I never thought they were brilliant. I just thought they wouldn't sell themselves so cheaply or would be so easily intimidated.
Except that this particular authoritarian in question is likely intellectually unable to parse the truth, while also being completely uninterested in it
Yeah that's what the military youtubers are saying too...makes no sense
Unless the intention is to attract a lot of attention, in which case it makes perfect sense.
Taiwan will be betrayed just like Ukraine.
Despite Trump childish behavior, Ukraine is still getting a lot of weapons and money last I checked.
How much is "a lot"? Trump has cut almost all aid since taking office. The EU is paying for the aid now. I'm assuming that the reason Zelensky cares to talk with Trump is for appearances, military intelligence, and to stall the restart of trade relations between US and Russia. The US has no real place at the negotiating table anymore. Everybody's just catering to Trump's ego, because it's the easiest way to stop him from doing any more harm.
Not from the US.
Trump is a Russian asset and is earning his keep.
Interesting read. Given what was covered and tradition notwithstanding, I think “Trump Class” (apart from being an oxymoron) is a perfect designation:
- oversized
- completely lacking in style
- not technically capable for the role it finds itself in!
I believe the designation you are looking for is “all-round fucking stupid”
Please be _appear weak when you are strong_
Please be _appear weak when you are strong_
Please be _appear weak when you are strong_
Having watched him get out manoeuvred by the Chinese over sanctions, I don’t think forward planning is a strength.
So Americans are now about to replace words in dictionary with word "Trump" or it will only be used as a prefix? [1]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYJ2w82WifU
I wish SNL was currently on the air and made a hell of a joke out of that announcement...
Here's my sketch idea: Naval officers unveil the ship, but when they pull the curtains, they murmur that it's smaller than claimed (The ships will be bigger, faster and a hundred times more powerful than any previous US-built warship, according to Trump(1)). Stormy Daniels shows up and says "Oh yeah, he likes to brag, but it's more like a mushroom.".
Cut to the bridge of the ship, the navigation officer comes to the Captain and says "Sir, the ship can't navigate properly. It seems whatever coordinates we set it always wants to head to... Epstein Island!"
Then the radar officer says "Sir, we are picking up something on the radar. It's a big, it's long...". Cut to footage of a big, black, submarine. The Captain interrupts with "That must be the Obama-Class submarine! The biggest, baddest ship we've ever had!", and the crew look at it in awe.
Then Obama shows up and lectures the viewing public: "Impressive, huh? But in reality there's no Obama-class submarine. The legacy of leading the country should be measured by how it improved Americans' lives, not by the ships and ballrooms." (this message needs to be workshopped...)
Stormy Daniels reappears and says "I know which ship I'd rather be on (wink).". Then fade out the scene with the crew panickedly saying "Captain, the ship is losing power! It looks like it's falling asleep!".
(1) https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/dec/22/trump-new-na...
If you want to know what the Navy was/is really planning look up the DDG(X).
A destroyer planned since 2021, hopefully it won't be another Ticonderoga class fuck up.
The Navy also needs the Constellation class frigate. The proposed replacement based on the Legend class cutter. It is basically a corvette like LCS on a bigger hull. The Navy doesn't need more corvette, they need proper warships.
Red Sea shows that ships need more defenses now that anyone can build anti-ship missiles and drones. Maybe they should have called Constellation light destroyer and DDG(X) a cruiser.
What the Red Sea has shown is that drone and anti-ship missiles are massively overhyped. A 40 year old ship design has fended off hundreds of such attacks without losing a single ship. Without even taking a single hit.
> The Navy also needs the Constellation class frigate.
The Navy needs ships it can actually build, the Constellation is trapped in an unending design hell and is already years behind.
was
https://www.war.gov/News/News-Stories/Article/Article/436695...
> The new Trump-class battleships will replace the Navy's previous plans to develop a new class of destroyer, the DDG(X).
I mean the whole proposal is nothing more than some of Trump's staffers coming up with an image and a bullet list and him liking it.
The Navy is gonna slow role this thing till he's out of office then reform the plan. Which is insanely annoying to me as a tax payer as we've basically had 25 years of the Navy's procurement being an absolute disaster, and now we're gonna lost another 4+ years over Trump's idiotic showboating.
I guess some defense contractor paid to sit next to him at dinner. KA-CHING!
[dead]
[flagged]
Believing in the absurd is a test of loyalty to the regime.
Perhaps for the same reason that conspiracy theorists need to ‘one-up’ each other - it’s a signal that you’re part of the group.
Hey come on buddy, it's not like there's a list of the 30,573 outright lies or misleading statements made by Grifter in Chief since his first term.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_or_misleading_statements...
They're authoritarians. Study fascism, or Nazism, or any authoritarian cult. All of them are absurd.